The origins of Bingo can be
traced back to the year 1530 in which a State run lottery game Lo Giuco de
Lotto was originated. The game is still held every Saturday in Italy. "Le
Lotto" migrated to France in the late 1700s in a form similar to the Bingo
we know today, with a playing card, tokens and numbers read aloud.
Throughout the 1800's these
lottery type of games spread quickly throughout Europe and many offshoots of
the game were created. One popular form of game had a player's card divided
into 3 horizontal rows and 9 vertical ones. The first vertical row contained
the numbers from 1 to 10, the second from 11 to 20, and so on until 81-90 on
the ninth vertical row. The 3 horizontal rows each contained five squares
with numbers in them and 4 blank ones. The caller would then draw from a bag
of wooden chips numbered from 1 to 90. The object of the game was to be the
first to completely cover one of the 3 horizontal rows. The blank squares
were considered free squares much like the free square in the Bingo cards of
today.
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In
1929, a game called "Beano" was played at a carnival near Atlanta,
Georgia. The bingo game's tools consisted of dried beans, a rubber
number stamp and some cardboard. A New York toy salesman named Edwin
Lowe, observed the game where players exclaimed "BEANO!" if they filled
a line of numbers on their card. Lowe introduced the game to his friends
in New York where one of them mistakenly yelled "BINGO!" in her
excitement . "Lowe's Bingo" was soon very popular and Lowe asked
competitors to pay him $1 per year to allow them to call their games
Bingo as well. By the 1940's Bingo games had sprung up all over the
country with thousands of games being played every week. Today Bingo
games can be found just about anywhere.
Edwin Lowe the originator of
the game "Lowe's Bingo" sought the services of a math professor at Columbia
University, Carl Leffler, to expand the amount of number combinations. In
1930, Professor Leffler devised 6,000 bingo cards with non-repeating number
groups.
It was said
that he completed the task successfully, and then went insane. In the 1800's
a Lotto game similar to Bingo was used as an educational tool Germany
designed to teach children multiplication tables.
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