Bingo History

The beginning of ‘Bingo’ can be reminisced to 1530. The First lottery game in the United State was named ‘Lo Giuco de Lotto’. Still from 1530 this game is played every weekend in Italy. During the 1800's, lottery games spread rapidly all over the Europe; later on many sequences of the game were formed.

One of the most popular games named ‘Player's card’ which alienated into nine vertical and three horizontal rows. The 1st vertical row includes numbers from one to ten, the 2nd vertical row from 11-20, 3rd vertical row is from 21 to30, and so on until 81 to 90 on the 9 vertical rows. There are three horizontal rows and each row contained 5 numbered plazas and 4 vacant plazas. The organizer had to draw the wooden chips from a bag one by one, numbered from 1 to 90. The object of the game was to be the first to completely cover one of the 3 horizontal rows. The four vacant plazas were considered as a free plaza.

During 1929, just for some fun a game was played at a festival near ‘Atlanta’ Georgia, the name of that game was "Beano". The tools of Bingo consist of some cardboard, a number stamp and dried beans. Edwin Lowe a toy salesman of the New York City observed the game and the craze of this game very closely and stated that if the organizer puts an additional line of numbers on their card the game may increase its fun. Edwin Lowe also gave. a new name to this game. He christened it ‘BINGO’.

‘More Than a Hill of Beans’

One of a well known reporter of the New York Times states that this game was mock-up after the Italian lottery. ‘Bingo’ – during its early stages it was recognized by ‘Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia,' organizers used a play card for this game with 3 horizontal rows and 9 vertical rows. As per the rule, the first person who completely covered a horizontal row was the winner. Just because of the continuous growing in popularity of this game, it was brought by one of the pitchman of Germany to America.

During one of the carnival in Atlanta, Edwin S. Lowe stumbled upon the game, and then called ‘beano’, the winner of this game used to shout- ‘Beano’ if he was the first person who placed a bean on his card.

"Lowe returned home to New York and created his own beano game with friends. The conversion of the name from ‘Beano’ to ‘Bingo’ also has an interesting story. Due to excitement one player yelled out ‘Bingo’ in place of ‘Beano’. After that Lowe modified the same game and sold out in the market by naming it.