History of Bingo

The game of bingo was found in Italy during the 1500s. It originated from the Italian lottery, known as Lo Giuoco del Lotto d�Italia. It was in 1530 during the unification of Italy that the Italian National Lottery was started and it has been operating ever since.

The lottery became popular in France and in 1778 the French developed their own version of the Lottery called Le Lotto. This led to the development of the original game of Lotto. The lottery consisted of cards which was divided into three horizontal and approximately nine vertical rows. Each horizontal row had 5 squares, all numbered and 4 blank squares randomly arranged. Each vertical row had the numbers 1 � 90 grouped on separate rows of each card. No two cards were alike, they were all unique. The game also had chips numbered 1 � 90. A player would receive a single card and a caller would draw a

In the late 1800s lotto games became popular as an educational tool. In the 1950s Germany designed a form of Lotto to teach multiplication tables to children. These educational games had names like: Spelling Lotto, Historical Lotto etc.

In 1929, a game called Beano became popular in Germany. Beano was a modified version of the Lotto. A caller would pull out a wooden disk from a box and these disks would each have a different number on them. The number would then be called aloud. Players marked their cards by placing a bean on the number. If a player ever filled a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line on the card he or she would shout �Beano!� and claimed his or her prize. The game was later introduced in New York by a man named Ed Lowe, who came across the game as he was traveling with a German carnival.

Ed Low altered the original game on his return to the United States. Low played the game in his apartment with his friends and he assumed the duties of the caller. During one of such sessions a woman who had one number left to win, the number was called and instead of shouting �Beano� she shouted �Bingo!�. Ed Low then renamed the game from Beano to bingo and it became an instant success and as a result, Lows company benefited from the success.

After the success of the game of Bingo, it was only natural that many imitators were born. Low was not bothered by the whole issue. All he did, was ask his competitors to pay him a dollar a year and rename their games to �Bingo�.

A priest from Pennsylvania had financial problems in his church, thus he came up with the idea of using Bingo to raise funds for the church. He bought several sets of the Bingo game. However there were problems arose when each game produced more than one winner. The problem had to be solved by adding more combinations of numbers for the bingo cards. For this reason Low went to a professor of mathematics at Columbia University by the name of Carl Leffler for help.
Leffler created 6,000 different new Bingo cards containing no repeating number groups. This proved to be a very difficult task for the professor as each card became more complex. When the task was completed Low paid the professor $100 per card.

This new improvement in the game of bingo saw the church of Wilkes-Barre saved from financial constraints. The news spread rapidly and the high demand saw the publishing of Bingo�s first instructional Manual and later a monthly newsletter called the Blotter was issued.

All the thanks go to Ed Low for the development in the game of Bingo.