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Bingo History - Started as the Italian lottery
When Italy was
unified in 1530, a lottery was launched.
This weekly lottery has been held
virtually every Saturday since its
inception. By 1778 word of the game had
spread to France and captured the fancy
of the intelligentsia. It was during
this period that the popular version of
the lottery was born. Cards were divided
into three horizontal rows and nine
vertical columns. In the 1800s the
popularity of lottery games spread
throughout Europe. Education variations
were created to aid children in learning
their multiplication tables, spelling
and even history.
What started as the Italian lottery made
its way to America via a carnival
pitchman touring Germany. There he came
across the lottery game and recognized
its appeal as a carnival tent game. He
made a few changes to the game,
including allowing players to complete a
row vertically, horizontally or
diagonally. And he changed the name to
Beano. He was working at the carnival
one night in 1929 near Atlanta when a
traveling toy salesman, Edwin S. Lowe,
came by. Early for a sales call, Lowe
decided to stop at the carnival. The
only tent open was the Beano tent, which
was so crowded with people that Lowe
wasn't able to play the game for
himself. Lowe watched how excited the
crowd was.
Lowe immediately realized the
money-making potential for Beano. Upon
his return to his home in New York, he
created his own Beano game by procuring
some beans, cardboard and a rubber
number stamp. He invited friends to his
apartment to play the game. There he saw
the same excitement that he saw at the
carnival. During the game, one player
had accidently yelled out "Bingo" and
the name stuck.
It was a priest from Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania who began to promote
playing bingo in churches. One the
parishiners in his financially ailing
church came up with the idea of using
Bingo as a way to raise money for the
church. But with only 24 unique cards to
play with, the priest was finding that
there too many winners for each game.
The priest contacted Lowe about
producing a large number of unique
number combinations for the cards. Lowe
recognized the fund-raising potential of
the game and enlisted the help of a
professor of mathematics at Columbia
University named Carl Leffler. But the
increased number of bingo cards was
exactly what was needed to make the game
a staple at churches across the country
and a sound source of fund-raising.
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