The history of bingo
Posted on July 12, 2008
Filed Under Bingo |
Like many other popular games of chance, bingo has a fascinating history. Few people know that bingo has been around for nearly 500 years. But the first bingo game ever played was not quite the game that we all know today. Here are some less known facts to impress your friends with, while you are playing an online bingo game.
In the U.S., bingo was originally called “beano”. It was a country fair game where a dealer would select numbered discs from a cigar box and players would mark their cards with beans. They yelled “beano” if they won.
The earliest form of bingo was played in Italy and dates back to 1530. Back then it was a lottery-style game, known as “Lo Giuoco Code Lotto” or “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia,” and is still played in Italy every Saturday.
In the late 1770s, the game was introduced from Italy to France where it was called “Le Lotto”, a game played among the most intellectual and wealthiest of Frenchmen. The Germans also played a version of the game in the 1800s, but they used it as an educational tool, to teach children about mathematics, spelling and history. In some areas, bingo online is also used for education today.
The game reached North America in 1929, when it became known as “beano”. It was first played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. If the caller yells a number present on the player’s card, they place a bean on the said number. When the beans form a straight line in any direction, the winner shouts ‘Beano!’ A New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe overheard someone accidentally yell “bingo” instead of “beano” and decided to rename the game “bingo”. He hired a Columbia University math professor, Carl Leffler, to help him increase the number of combinations in bingo cards. By 1930, Leffler had invented 6,000 different bingo cards. It is rumoured that Leffler then went insane.
A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania asked Lowe about using bingo to help raise church funds. Therefore, bingo started being played in churches and became increasingly popular. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played every week at least.
In 1968, under the Gaming Act of 1968, bingo is formalized in the UK. In 1986 the National bingo game was launched in the UK. By then, online bingo was still a speck on the horizon!
Today, more than 3 million people regularly play bingo offline, with numbers soaring in online bingo. Also, more than $90 million dollars are spent on bingo each week in North America alone.
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