The History of Bingo

The history of bingo begins in the 16th Century after the unification of Italy. The "Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia" became the first state run lottery and gained a lot of attention from the government (because its been generating an incredibel amounts of revenue for the state) and the people. Considering Bingo to be a variation of lottery, this is the very first documented case of  bingo played on a large scale.

However, the French Lottery Le Lotto may be much closer to modern Bingo game. This game was very popular among rich Frenchmen in the late 18th century. A caller drew out wooden discs numbered from one to ninety from a bag and shouted them out to the players. Each player had a card with 3 rows and 9 columns with numbers that looked pretty much the same as the modern bingo card looks. There were random numbers between 1 and 10 in the first column, numbers between 11 and 20 in the second column and so on up to numbers between 81 and 90 in the last column. Additionally, there were only 5 numbers and 4 blanks in every row. The person to cover the numbers on an entire row was announced winner of this game.

Later, the variations of Le Lotto were used for educational purposes in Germany rather than for being used as a gambling game. The German variations of Le Lotto were used to teach children their time tables. Today, one can find similar game, but this game will differ much from the original.

In the late 1920's Edwin S. Lowe, a toy salesman from New York, came across a carnival game in Georgia. The game called Beano involved a caller who's job was to draw numbered wooden discs from a gab and shout number to the participants. Each player had several dried beans and a card with numbered squares. Each time they head the number on their card called out they marked it with a bean. The winner was the first player with a straight line of beans on his game card either in a vertical, horizontal or diagonal direction.

When Lowe returned to New York he invited his friends to his apartment and introduced new exciting game. It is said, that his friends liked the game very much and one women was so excited that instead of "Beano!" she yelled "Bingo!". In such a way the game received new name and Lowe created the first commercialized version of Bingo and began selling 12-card set for $1 and 24-card set for $2.

Pennsylvanian priest had seen a great opportunity to raise money for church needs in the game of Bingo and decided to hold gaming events. Unfortunately, this wasn't a great idea because originally the game wasn't designed to be played by many players and in each game there were ten winners instead of two. Later, the university professor received a task to find 6000 cards with 6000 possible combinations of numbers. It took him several months and drove him insane.

More than 10,000 bingo games in a single week were played in 1934. With the appearance of online bingo rooms in the late 1990's the popularity of Bingo attracted millions of players from all around the world. Today, online Bingo along with traditional Bingo played at bingo halls is one of the most popular gambling games.