Bingo History

The French originally started a game called Le Lotto in the year 1778, this was their own version of the Lottery which then became Lotto. The game turned out to be very popular in France, with cards having 3 x 9 horizontal and vertical rows respectively. Horizontal rows have 4 numbered and four blanks squares, randomly arranged. The vertical rows have numbers 1-90 corresponding to the numbers on the chips also used. The first player to cover the horizontal row of the card basing on the numbers drawn and announced by a caller wins the game. And then by the year 1929, Germany had a known game called Beano, another form of Lotto. Although the materials used are different, the game objective of Beano was somewhat similar to that of Le Lotto. The first player to fill-in the horizontal, vertical or diagonal line on the card wins, but he has to shout “Beano!” this time.

Ed Lowe came across this game in Germany and decided to bring the idea with him to New York, although he did modifications with the game. While trying to play with his friends, a woman who won suddenly shouted BINGO instead of Beano. That’s when the Online Bingo game originated. Lowe replaced the name Bingo from Beano which by then became an instant success that gave him lots of earnings despite imitators appearing. Lowe still benefited by asking his rivals to rename their games to bingo but giving him back a dollar a year in exchange.

An error in the game was soon discovered when a priest in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania encountered having a half dozen winners on every game. He was using bingo as a way to raise funds for the church. Troubled, Lowe suddenly asked help from a professor of Mathematics at Columbia University, Carl Leffler. The professor added number combinations to solve the problem, generating 6,000 new bingo cards which have non-repeating number groups. The professor was paid $100 per card after having solved the problem. With the new card modification, the bingo u.k. game became very popular since then and up until now.