Bingo

Humans just love to beat the odds. They’ll take a chance on love or a dream or even the “luck of the draw,” whether with a deck of cards or a bag full of numbers—and Bingo, they’re winners. Ah, Bingo, now there’s an American-born game enjoyed in firehouses and churches and community centers across the country. Bingo is a game of luck that charities and nonprofits especially love to use to increase their coffers. A game of chance as American as apple pie, right? Well, no, not really.

Actually, Bingo is the cousin, several times removed, of a public lottery that began in Florence, Italy in the early 16^th century. The game of chance became so popular that other cities in Italy quickly adopted their own versions, with all of them combining into the national Lo Giuoco del Lotto in 1530. The Italioan Lotto remains popular today, with draws held three days a week.

From the Lo Giuoco del Lotto, number games continued to grow in popularity throughout Europe, even branching out in Germany with educational variations that encouraged knowledge of spelling, history, and animals. Lotto eventually found its way into 1920s America through a carnival pitchman who encountered the Germany Lotto game during his carnival travels in Europe. He adapted the game for American audiences and renamed it Beano.

In the pitchman’s version of the game, players bought cards with numbers printed on them; the pitchman pulled numbered wooden disks from a box and called out the numbers; players then placed beans on the numbers called. When a player filled a line of numbers, “Beano!” was shouted, and the winner took home a Kewpie doll.

In 1929, struggling New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe visited a carnival in Georgia late one night and found himself attracted to a large group of people excitedly playing Beano. The crowd seemed addicted to the game, refusing to let the pitchman close up his game tables. Intrigued, Lowe bought some cards and beans and tried the game on some of his friends back home in Brooklyn. One player got so wrapped up in the game that when she won, she mistakenly shouted, “Bingo!” The name stuck.

Bingo’s popularity with Lowe’s friends encouraged him to print up his own cards—in some 6,000 number combinations—and go public with the game. It was a hit, spreading across the country as a popular, fun, and economical way to raise money for charity events and civic organizations.

Bingo helped to establish Lowe as a successful toy manufacturer, later including the dice game Yahtzee. Bingo remains as popular as ever here in the U.S. and around the world and has even spawned its own second cousins. There are bingo slot machines, poker bingo, and online bingo play sites on the Internet. All keep the same basic Bingo formula that has made the game so exciting for so many generations of people.

Edwin Lowe’s late night carnival visit sure beat the odds. Milton Bradley bought Lowe’s company in 1973 for $26 million. Bingo!