The history of bingo

The history of bingo

The game we now know and love as bingo is thought to have originated in Italy, and it is thought to have its origins in the Italian lottery.  This lottery has been played almost every Saturday since it got its start in 1530, and by the 1770s word of the game had spread to neighboring France, where it captured the attention of the monied elite. 

The first cards used to play this game featured three horizontal rows and nine vertical columns.  Each row featured a total of nine squares, five containing numbers and four which were blank, arranged in random order.  The vertical columns held ten numbers each, with the first column being numbered 1 through 10, the second 11-20, and so on, with the last column containing numbers from 81 to 90.  

To play the game, wooden chips numbered 1 to 90 were placed in a bag and pulled out one at a time.  Each player had a unique card, and the first person who completely covered a horizontal row won the prize.

By the 1800s the popularity of this game had engulfed all of Europe, with educational games based on the cards being used to teach children a number of important lessons.  At this time the game we now know as bingo was known instead as beano.

It was a simple mishearing of the word beano that led bingo to have its modern name.  A toy dealer from New York seeing the game played at a carnival in Atlanta thought the players were yelling bingo, and the rest is history.

After bingo came to the United States, it underwent several changes until it became the game we know today.  Bingo has continued to change and evolve, and today there are bingo tournaments, bingo parlors, bingo in casinos and even bingo on the internet.

From its humble beginnings to the world of the internet, bingo remains one of the most popular and best loved games in all the world.  Whether you play for pennies at the local carnival or big bucks at the next bingo tournament, bingo truly has something to offer everyone.