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The Interesting Origins of Bingo

Bingo, the game everybody loves, has a very colorful and interesting history. Many years ago, the game was not even called bingo. It's interesting to note that bingo got its name by some quirk of fate.

Bingo was thought to have originated from the Italian lottery Lo Gioco del Lotto d'Italia, which is now called Lotterie Nacionali. This game was soon exported to France in the 18th century and was then called Le Lotto. In Germany, a variation of the game was used by children to learn the multiplication table.

Le Lotto became popular among the wealthy French society. A Le Lotto card is composed of nine columns and three rows. Each column consists of five numbers and four blank spaces placed in random. Each column is assigned a specific set of numbers. For example, 1-10 for the first column, 11-20 for the second column and so on. The objective of the game is to mark a horizontal line of five numbers.

Bingo arrived in the United States during the early 1900s. A traveling pitchman discovered the game while touring with a carnival in Germany and brought to American shores. The unnamed pitchman changed a few rules and called the game Beano, since beans were used to "mark" the numbers. When a player makes a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line, he shouts "Beano!"

In 1929, a toy salesman named Edwin Lowe was on his way to Jacksonville, Georgia when he came across a country fair packed with people playing Beano. The pitchman then told him how he discovered the game and modified it into a game called Beano.

Lowe returned to New York and began playing the game at home together with friends. It so happened that a woman playing the game got so excited that she muttered "Bingo" instead of "Beano," so the game was soon christened "bingo."

At that time, Lowe had 24 cards in each bingo set. A Catholic priest who purchased some of Lowe's bingo sets for his fundraising events discovered that there were multiple winners for each draw. Lowe then hired a Columbia university professor to produce 6,000 unique bingo card combinations.

By the 1930s, bingo became very popular in churches, fundraisers and social gatherings all over the country. People began imitating Lowe's bingo cards, so he asked the imitators to pay a fee of one dollar a year and allowed anyone to copy and produce his bingo cards.

Nearly a century after Lowe's creation, bingo continues to be one of the biggest attractions in every village or community. Churches, charitable institutions and even governments have used the popular game to raise funds, and many a bingo lover has won a few bucks playing this very exciting and entertaining game.