Bingo Game

Bingo’s original roots go back as far as 1530 when the Italians created a national lottery called Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia. 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 alike.

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. It was here, one evening, that 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 beans. The game being played was a variation of 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 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 decided 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 at having completed a row stood and, being slightly tongue tied, shouted Bingo instead of Beano and the game as we know 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 Mathematics professor. 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 its 6,000 cards.

Demand grew at such a phenomenal rate that by 1934 Lowe had over a thousand employees try 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!

Thankfully you will never have that problem with so many games being played around the country as well as online!

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