The History of the Bingo Game

Every game has its history, its origins and the pathway it took that game to reach its current position and status. Here you can see how bingo actually became – bingo.

In the year 1530, back in Italy, a game of lottery, called Lo Giuco de Lotto, was held (and still is) every Saturday. This game, under the name "Le Lotto", expanded into French territory in the late 18th century. Le Lotto was a game similar to the bingo game of our days, played with cards, tokens and called numbers.
 
Bingo, or "Beano", was first played in America in 1929, at a carnival in the vicinity of Atlanta, Georgia. Beano was played with a rubber stamp, dried beans and cardboards. Edwin Lowe, a salesman from New York, happened to watch the beano game in action, where people yelled "Beano!" whenever a line was filled on their cardboard. Lowe brought the game to New York, where he played it with his friends. One of the yelled "Bingo" instead of "Beano", and the name stuck ever since. "Lowe's Bingo" soon became a very popular game, and people would pay $1 per year to Lowe, in order to legally call their games "Bingo" as well.
 
During the great economical depression in the U.S. of the 1930's, a game called "Screeno" was played in some of the motion picture theaters. This game was a variant of bingo, and the prizes were estimated in hundreds of dollars, in either merchandise or cash. One night every week was a "bank night", in which patrons got their bingo tickets for free along with their admission tickets.
 
In the 1940's bingo was everywhere. With thousands of games played every week, bingo became one of the most popular games ever to be found in the history. Churches, gatherings of friends, parties – they all contained this exciting, energy-filled game of bingo.
 
In the last few decades, bingo was introduced and played in Japan, Monte-Carlo casinos and, actually, worldwide. In 1960 the UK government permitted the formation of commercial lotto clubs, which boosted the popularity f the game in only a few years. In the UK, bingo has become more popular than it was in the USA!
 
A few years ago, another version of the bingo game was formed as the online bingo (also known as bingo online, web bingo, Internet bingo etc.). This online game allows players to play from their own computer, without the need of walking all the way to the nearby bingo hall.

Online bingo has become very popular in the U.S, as well as other countries, and new online bingo sites, foxwoodsbingo.com, for example, go on the net almost every single day. Now we can truly say that bingo was affected by the industrial revolution.