The History of Bingo

Bingo's original roots go back as far as 1530, when Italy was unified, and the Italians created a national lottery called 'Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia' which is still being played every Saturday in Italy. By 1778 the French had gotten wind of this game and adapted it for their own purposes, making small changes to the game including the card which they subsequently divided into three horizontal and nine vertical rows. The vertical rows contained numbers from 1 to 10 in the first row, 11 to 20 in the second row, etc..., up to 90. No two Lotto cards were the same.

By 1929 the game's popularity had spread across the world and straight to Jacksonville, Georgia, where a travelling carnival pitchman had come across the game the previous year in Germany. The Germans also played a version of the game in the 1800's, but they used it as a child's game to help young students to learn math, spelling and history. It was there, one evening, that New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe ended up at this carnival where all but one of the booths were closed. This booth was packed with people so Lowe decided to check it out. The action centered on a horseshoe shaped table covered with numbered cards and dried beans. The game being played was a variation of the original Italian Lotto called Beano.

The caller was pulling small numbered wooden disks from a cigar box and the players at the booth were eagerly marking them off their cards by placing a dried bean over the number. Once they had completed a line, the player called out 'Beano'.

Lowe returned home to his native New York where he dicided to have a go at operating the Beano game. his friends soon caught on to playing Beano with the same tension and excitement he had seen at the carnival. During one game, a woman, so excited having completed a row stood and, being slightly tongue tied, shouted Bingo instead of Beano and the game as we know and love it today was born.

The early versions of the game were great fun, but each time it was played it was producing five or six winners which was a slight problem. Lowe decided that more numbers needed to be added to reduce the odds of winning and so sought out the help of a Columbia University Mathematics professor, his name was Carl Leffler. Lowe's request was that the professor had to devise 6,000 new Bingo cards with non repeating number groups. Eventually the professor completed the task and the E.S. Lowe Company had it's 6,000 unique cards. It is said that Leffler then went insane.

A Catholic pries from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, approached Lowe about using bingo as a means of raising church funds. When bingo started being played in churches it became increasingly popular. Demand grew at such a phenomenal rate that by 1934 Lowe had over a thousand employees trying to keep up with the estimated 10,000 games that were being played every week. According to Lowe, the largest Bingo game in history was played in New York's Teaneck Armory - 60,000 players, with another 10,000 being turned away at the door! This record will probably never be broken with so many games being played around the world as well as online.

In the UK the situation was quite different, and the game did not become widely known until 1960, when the Gaming Act passed by Parliament in that year permitted such games in members-only establishments. The following year the game of Bingo was brought over from the USA by Eric Morley, the man who was also responsible for the development of the Miss World competition (this man has a lot to answer for!) Bingo in the UK was a commercial proposition, and so the British Bingo archetype was quite different to that found across the Atlantic, where it was mainly played as a means to raise money for charities.

Across Britain there were many large buildings that had been rendered obsolete by the rise of the television; theatres, cinemas and dance halls. Many of these required little modification to turn them into Bingo halls, and vertainly some buildings played a dual role as cinema or Bingo Hall, depending on the night of the week. As their former uses normally indicated, British Bingo Halls were far mor eplush that their American counterparts, and the theatrical feel was further enhanced by the preferred British method of coming up with the numbers. American clubs simply drew numbers from a bag. In the UK, glass cabinets were fitted with fans, filled with numbered ping-pong balls to produce the numbers. The effect was pure showbiz, but they were easy to rig and unsophisticated, which led to the widescale adoption of electronic Random Number Generators (or the RNG) during the next decade.

In 1968 another gaming act was passed allowing clubs to play prize and cash Bingo via tabletop coin slots, as well as establishing a Gaming Board to regulate Bingo clubs, which were proving to be highly popular. By this time many clubs were being further altered by having floors levelled and cinema seats replaced by proper tables. In fact, the game proved to be so successful that in the 1980's there were several clubs opened in brand new purpose built halls.

The latest development in Bingo is the appearance of Bingo games you can play at home on the internet. Using mostly American style Bingo cards (5x5) but with 90 balls.