A Short History of Bingo

The origins of Bingo go back to the year 1530 and a lottery game called "Lo Giuoco Code Loto" which was played in Spain. It took the game almost 3 centuries to mature and in the eighteenth century many new dimensions had been added to the game like tokens and cards. Bingo became extremely popular in Germany as it was used to teach children basic mathematics, spellings and animal names etc. This was a good learning aid for children as it blended play with learning and children being absorbed in the game would end up learning the basics of vocabulary and mathematics. In today's highly computerized and sophisticated gaming world, lotto is still holding its ground firmly. Milton Bradley comes to mind - he sells a lotto game featuring the sesame street Muppets, which provide children (ages 3-6) valued lessons of mathematics and spelling through hours of fun filled Lotto playing.

In the year 1929 a New York toy sales man, Edwin S. Lowe, while driving through Georgia came across a carnival. All booths of the carnival were shut, except one which was crowded with people. Upon standing around longer he managed to sneak a peek into what was going on inside the booth - he saw a U-shaped table with cards and beans. A person who seemed to be the pitchman took out numbered wooden disks from a box and shouted out the numbers. The participants would hurriedly check their pieces of paper (bingo cards) to see if the number being called out was also on their cards. If so, they would place a bean on the number. This would continue until one of the participants achieved a pattern horizontal, vertical or diagonal. The participant would then shout 'Beano' and he would receive a Kewpie doll.

That night Lowe tried to play beano but could not because of the excessive crowd.  But he did notice the excitement and elation of the people around.  Upon returning back home to New York he tried playing Beano with his friends as he assumed the role of the pitchman. The same level of excitement and elation was achieved. He recalls one of his friends having just one number to win and as that number was called out and the bean was added to her card, she jumped up in sheer excitement, instead of saying BEANO she stuttered and shouted the word "BINGO".

"I cannot describe the strange sense of elation which that girl's cry brought to me," Lowe said, "All I could think of was that I was going to come out with this game, and it was going to be called Bingo!"

Lowe never tried to trademark the Bingo and soon after its smashing success many imitators came along to cash in on the hit game. Lowe took a decision to not sue the imitators and just asked them to pay him one dollar a year. They did so as it was a rather small price to pay to avoid litigation. Since then the name became generic and too this day is called BINGO!

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