The History of Bingo
In early 1530s the central government of Italy, constituted after unification of states, used to organize a state lottery. With the onset of 18th century this state lottery took shape of a gamed played using cards bearing combination of numbers on them. This was quite similar to the modern day Bingo.
But it was the American toymaker Edwin S. Lowe who discovered Bingo in the exact form and format it has today. Back in 1929 while travelling to Jacksonville, Georgia, Lowe spotted a country carnival on his way and took some time out to visit it. He found that most the booths were closed but there was tent with a whole host of people playing a game called Beano. There was a caller pulling out numbered wooden disks from a box and players were marking out the called number on their cards. The game was so fascinating that crowd went on playing till wee hours.
On discussing with the game operator Lowe understood that the operator himself saw the game in a carnival in Germany and brought it to America. After doing some alterations the operator renamed it to Beano.
Lowe liked the game so much that on returning home, he organized it for his friends. They used rubber stamps to mark the cards. One day, one of the Lowe’s friends finished a line and started yelling Bingo in place of Beano and the game got a new name.
And after the grand success of pilot testing, Lowe finally unleashed the game to the whole of America with 12 card game costing a dollar and 24 card game costing a couple of dollars.
Not too long after the launch of Bingo a priest from Pennsylvania contacted Lowe for raising funds for a social cause. But Lowe knew that even with 24 card games there are usually several winners and profitability is limited. So he contacted a professor of mathematics at Colombia University named Carl Leffler to produce 6,000 different Bingo cards. The professor did complete the herculean task but the work drove him insane. The new expanded Bingo with 6,000 cards proved to be a good fund raiser and soon lead to a storm of Bingo fundraising events in North America.
