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Origin of Bingo
The Origin of Bingo play as we know it today is a form of Bingo lottery and is a direct descendant of Lo
Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia. When Italy was united in 1530, the Italian National
Bingo Lottery Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia was organized, and has been held, almost
without pause, at weekly intervals to this date. Today the Italian State lottery
is indispensable to the government's budget, with a yearly contribution in
excess of 75 million dollars.
In 1778 it was reported in the French press that Le Lotto (bingo play) had captured the fancy
of the intelligentsia. In the classic version of Lotto (bingo play), which developed during
this period, the bingo playing card used in the bingo game was divided into three horizontal
and nine vertical rows. Each horizontal row had five numbered and four blank
squares in a random arrangement. The vertical rows contained numbers from 1 to
10 in the first row, 11 to 20 in the second row, et cetera, up to 90. No two
Bingo Lotto cards were alike. Chips numbered from 1 to 90 completed the Bingo playing
equipment. Bingo players were dealt a single Bingo Lotto card, then the Bingo caller would draw a
small wooden, numbered token from a cloth bag and read the bingo number aloud. The
bingo players would cover the number if it appeared on their card. The first
bingo player to
cover a horizontal row was the winner.
In the 1800's educational bingo Lotto games became popular. A German Lotto bingo
game of the
1850s was designed to teach children their multiplication tables. There were
other educational Bingo Lotto games such as 'Spelling bingo Lotto,' 'Animal
bingo Lotto,' and
'Historical bingo Lotto." Even in today's highly competitive toy and game market,
Bingo Lotto is holding its own; Milton Bradley sells a Bingo Lotto game featuring the Sesame
Street Muppets. The Bingo game is designed to provide children in the 3 to 6 year age
range with a splash of fun while, at the same time, teaching them to count and
recognize numbers.
Beano (bingo)
It was an evening in December of 1929 when a very tired New York toy salesman,
Edwin S. Lowe, decided to drive on to Jacksonville, Georgia so that he might
have an early start for his next day's appointments. The year before, with two
employees and $1,000 capital, Lowe had set up his own toy company. Soon after,
the market crashed and the outlook for his budding firm looked bleak indeed.
A few miles from Jacksonville, Lowe came around a bend in the road and was
greeted by the bright lights of a country carnival. he was ahead of schedule, so
he parked his car and got out. All of the carnival booths were closed except
one, which was packed with people. Lowe stood on tiptoes and peered over the
shoulders of the participants. The action centered on a horseshoe shaped table
covered with numbered bingo cards and bingo beans. The game being played was a variation of
Lotto called Beano (bingo). The pitchman, or caller, pulled small numbered wooden disks
from an old cigar box and, at the same time, called the bingo number aloud. The
bingo players responded by eagerly checking their bingo card to see if they had the number
called; if so, they would place a bean on the bingo number. This sequence continued
until some someone filled a line of numbers on their bingo card - either horizontally,
vertically or diagonally. This feat was marked by the shout of "Beano!"
(bingo) The
winner received a small Kewpie doll.
Ed Lowe tried to play Beano (bingo) that night, but, he recalls, "I couldn't get a seat.
But while I was waiting around, I noticed that the bingo players were practically
addicted to the bingo game. The pitchman wanted to close up, but every time he said,
"This is the last bingo game', nobody moved. When he finally closed at 3:00 a.m. he
had to chase them out."
After locking up, the pitchman told Lowe that he had run across a game called
Lotto (bingo) while traveling with a carnival in Germany the previous year. His
immediate thought was that it would make a good tent or carnival game. He made a
few changes in its play, and a change of the name to Beano (bingo). The bingo game proved to
be such a surefire crowd pleaser and money maker that on his return to the
United States, he continued to work the bingo game on the Carnival circuit.
Bingo
Returning to his home in New York, Lowe bought some dried beans, a rubber
numbering stamp and some cardboard. Friends were invited to his apartment and Ed
Lowe assumed the pitchman's duties. Soon his friends were playing Beano ( bingo)
with the
same tension and excitement as he had seen at the carnival. During one session
Lowe noticed that one of his bingo players was close to winning. She got more excited
as each bean was added to her bingo card. Finally there was one number left - and it
was called! The woman jumped up, became tongue tied, and instead of shouting "Beano,"
stuttered "B-B-B-BINGO!"
"I cannot describe the strange sense of elation which that girl's cry brought to
me," Lowe said. "All I could think of was that I was going to come out with this
game, and it was going to be called Bingo!"
The earliest Lowe Bingo game in two variations - a twelve card set for one
dollar and a two dollar set with twenty-four cards. The bingo game was an immediate
success and put Lowe's company squarely on its feet.
Although the name Bingo could very well have been trademarked, the game itself,
having come out of the public domain, had little chance of being protected.
Imitators came out of the woodwork once the success of Lowe's bingo game was evident.
Lowe was very gracious about the whole affair. He asked his competitors to pay
him a dollar a year, and to call their games Bingo, too. A small price to pay to
avoid litigation - and this the bingo name became generic.
Bingo Cards and Insane Mathematicians
Several months after Bingo hit the market, Lowe was approached by a priest from
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The Father had a problem in his parish. A fast
thinking parishioner had come up with the idea of using Bingo as a way to get the
church out of its financial troubles. The priest had put the scheme into
operation after having bought several sets of Lowe's $2.00 Bingo game. However,
problems developed immediately when it was found that each bingo game produced half a
dozen or more winners. Lowe could immediately see the tremendous fund raising
possibilities of Bingo, but at the same time, he realized that to make the bingo
game
workable on this large of a scale, a great many more combinations of numbers
would have to be developed for the bingo cards. To accomplish this, Lowe sought the
services of an elderly professor of mathematics at Columbia University, one Carl
Leffler. Lowe's request was that the professor devise 6,000 new Bingo cards with
non repeating bingo number groups. The professor agreed to a fee that remunerated him
on a per bingo card basis. As the professor worked on, each bingo card became increasingly
difficult. Lowe was impatient, and toward the end the price per bingo card had risen
to $100. Eventually, the task was completed. The E.S. Lowe Company had its 6,000
bingo cards - at the expense of the professor's sanity!
The church of Wilkes-Barre was saved and after it, a Knights of Columbus Hall in
Utica, New York. Word spread fast - "I used to get thousands of letters asking
for help on setting up Bingo games, "said Lowe - so many that he published
Bingo's first Instructional Manual. This effort was followed by a monthly news
letter called The Blotter (absorbs all Bingo news) which was distributed to
37,000 bingo subscribers. By 1934 there were an estimated 10,000 Bingo games a week,
and Ed Lowe's firm had a thousand bingo employees frantically trying to keep up with
demand - nine entire floors of the New York office space, and 64 presses
printing 24 hours a day - "... we used more newsprint than the New York Times!"
According to Lowe, the largest Bingo game in history was played in New York's
Teaneck Armory - 60,000 bingo players, with another 10,000 being turned away at the
door. Ten automobiles were given away. Bingo was off to a fast start, and at the
same time, had reserved itself next to baseball and apple pie - thanks to Ed
Lowe and the loss of Professor Leffler's sanity.
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