The Origins of Bingo

Bingo as we know it today is actually a form of lottery which originally descended from the Italian National Lottery and dating back to 1530. By the 1800’s, many educational variations of the game Lotto appeared as far as Germany and it was there that a traveller with a roaming carnival, saw the game, adapted it, began offering a prize for the winner and renamed it Beano.

On the carnival’s return to the United States, a toy salesman Edwin S Lowe who happened by the carnival was amazed to see the phenomenal effect on people playing a game of Beano. He further adapted the game, renamed it Bingo and successfully launched it. Its success over the years and in the highly competitive toy and games market was astounding.

To this day, thousands of people young and old enjoy Bingo, with board game versions ever popular and large organised games of Bingo, where prizes range from cash sums to brand new cars held on a daily basis in cities and towns throughout the world. The success story of Bingo continues...

The roots of the game

Bingo as we know it today is actually a form of lottery and it originally descended from the Italian National Lottery (Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia), when Italy was united in 1530 and the Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia was organized and has been held at weekly intervals to this day. With a yearly contribution in excess of $75 million dollars The Italian State lottery has now become indispensable to the Italian government's budget.

In the original version of Lotto, the playing card used in the game was divided into three horizontal and nine vertical rows. Each horizontal row had five numbered and four blank squares in random order. The vertical rows contained numbers 1-10 in the first row, 11-20 in the second row, and continued up to 90. It was ensured that no two Lotto cards were alike. Numbered chips from 1-90 were used for the purpose of playing the game on each card. Each player was dealt a single Lotto card and the caller would then draw a small wooden, numbered token from a cloth bag. He would read the number out aloud and the players would cover the number if it appeared on their card. The winner of the game would be the first player to cover a horizontal row.

In the 1800's educational versions of the Lotto game became popular. In the 1850s a German Lotto game was designed to teach children their multiplication tables. Numerous educational Lotto games soon appeared, such as “Spelling Lotto”, “Animal Lotto”, and “Historical Lotto”. Even with the progress of time and in an increasingly competitive toy and games market, Lotto is still a firm favourite.

Edwin S Lowe, a New York toy salesman, set up his own company with $1,000 capital in 1928 but soon after the market crashed and the outlook for the company looked very bleak. Lowe would travel far in order to generate and secure business for his company and it was on one of his business trips in December 1929 that he came across a country carnival, where all the booths were closed except one, which was teeming with people.

He noted that the attraction was centered on a horseshoe shaped table that was covered with numbered cards and beans. The game being played was a variation of Lotto called Beano. The caller pulled small numbered wooden disks from an empty cigar box and called out the number aloud. The players checked their card and if they had the number called they placed a bean on the number. The winner was the first person to fill a line of numbers horizontally, vertically or diagonally, and to shout out “Beano”. The prize for the winner was a small Kewpie doll.

Ed Lowe tried to join the game but found himself unable to get a seat. He noticed that people seemed transfixed by this game. Each time the caller said “Last game” nobody moved. This went on in to the early morning hours, with the caller finally having to throw people out of the tent. He told Lowe he had come across a game called Lotto while he was travelling with a carnival in Germany, and had thought it would make a good tent or carnival game. He made a few changes in its play and changed the name to Beano. The game rapidly became a success with the crowds and a real moneymaker, so he continued to work the game on the Carnival circuit after his return to the Unites States.

On his return to New York, Lowe decided to try the game out on his friends using a rubber-numbering stamp, cardboard and some dried beans. Himself as the caller, Lowe noticed how his friends played Beano with the same intensity as the people he had seen at the carnival and during one session, when one of the players was close to winning, he noted how excitable she had become when she had one number left on her card. When her final number was called she jumped up in elation and shouted out “BINGOOO” instead of “Beano”.

Lowe recognising the huge potential of the game, launched the game of Bingo with two variations. A twelve card set costing $1 and a $2 set with twenty-four cards. The game was an immediate success and with it the security of Lowe’s company. As the game’s success grew, imitations began to appear carrying the name Bingo because the name had not been trademarked. Lowe finally came to an agreement with his competitors that they pay him a dollar a year in order to call their games Bingo too, and so the name became generic.

The fundraising possibilities of Bingo came when a priest whose church was in financial difficulty approached Lowe. A parishioner had an idea to use the game to raise money needed for the church. The priest put the scheme into action after buying several sets of Lowe’s $2 Bingo game. Problems developed immediately when the priest found that each game produced half a dozen winners. Lowe realized that to make the game workable on a large scale, a greater combination of numbers would have to be developed for the cards. Lowe commissioned Carl Leffler, an elderly professor of mathematics at Columbia University to create 6,000 new Bingo cards with non-repeating number groups. The agreed fee was on a per card basis but when the professor began work on the cards, it quickly became evident just how difficult a task it was to be. At the expense of the old professor’s sanity, the 6,000 cards completed, Lowe finally paid a fee of $100 per card!

The church of Wilkes-Barre was saved and as word spread fast, Lowe was inundated with requests on setting up Bingo games. He published the first “Bingo Instructional Manual” followed by a monthly newsletter distributed to 37,000 subscribers. By 1934 there were an estimated 10,000 Bingo games per week and Ed Lowe’s one thousand employees struggling to keep up with the rapidly increasing demand for the game. The largest bingo game on record where a record 60,000 people played and the prizes given away were ten brand new cars was in Teaneck Armory, New York, with another 10,000 people turned away for lack of space.
Thus the game of Bingo has become firmly encased in our history and its popularity has steadily increased with the years.