The History of Bingo

Bingo actually started as a lottery type game in Italy in the 1530s. It was known as Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia, and is still played every Saturday in much of Europe. It spread to France in the 1780’s where a slightly different version was played.

Both lotteries consisted of a series of cards with nine columns and three rows. Cards were randomly drawn and placed on the rows. Chips with numbers proceeding in sequence were placed in bags and drawn. Column one bag contained numbers from 1-10, column 2 from 11-20 and so on. Numbers were drawn from the bags until someone’s unique lotto card had all the numbers called. They became the winner of the lottery.

Modern Bingo

In 1929 a traveling toy salesman by the name of Edwin S. Lowe attended a carnival in Atlanta, Georgia. He saw a game from Europe being played in one of the tents. The game was played using beans to cover the squares, and Lowe was amazed at how excited the crowd became playing the game. When they won they excitedly jumped up and yelled “BEANO”.

Lowe returned to his home in New York and created a set of cards using cardboard grids and a number stamp, bought a bag of dried beans for markers and invited some friends over. He changed a few basic rules and allowed the players to form single rows or columns to win the game. His friends began playing and soon all were enjoying the game. One young lady got so excited when she won instead of yelling out “BEANO” she yelled out “BINGO”. Lowe immediately liked the new name and set out to produce sets of the cards for sale. The first Bingo games could be purchase for a dollar for a 12-card set or 24 dollars for a 24-card set.

Expanding the cards

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania is credited with being the first town to combine bingo and church fundraising activities. The priest soon realized that with a limited number of cards there were multiple people winning and that there was less money going to the church to benefit the fundraiser. He contacted Lowe who in turn contacted Carl Leffler, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University. Professor Leffler agreed to make 6000 non-repeating bingo cards at the cost of $100.00 per card. Legend has it that this task was so stressful that Professor Leffler suffered a breakdown trying to complete all the cards.