How the Game of Bingo Came to Be

Although the game of bingo only became popular in the US back in the start of the 20th century, its origins have actually been traced back a couple of centuries earlier, in 1530. Back then, a state-run lottery game in Italy called the “Lo Gioco del Lotto d’Italia” started. From there, the French adopted the concept of the lotto game in the late 1700s. The Germans also had their own version of the game, but they mainly used it as a children’s game which helped them in studying math, history and spelling.

When the concept of the lottery reached the shores of America in 1929, the game was called “beano”. It was first played near Atlanta, Georgia at a carnival. Later on, a toy salesman in New York Edwin S. Lowe gave the game a new name “bingo” after hearing someone accidentally yelling “bingo” instead of “beano”. After that, he hired Carl Leffler, a math professor at Columbia University, to help hi, create more combinations in bingo cards. In 1930, Leffler was able to invent about 6,000 different bingo cards.

After that, more and more individuals and organizations started taking interest in the game. A Catholic priest living in Pennsylvania was one of the individuals who talked to Lowe about using the game as a way to raise funds for the church. That was the moment when bingo started to be played in numerous churches nationwide, making the game more and more popular. A couple of years after, in 934, about 10,000 bingo games started to be played on a weekly basis. Today, it has been recorded that over $90 million are spent on bingo games in North America weekly.