Bingo History

The history of bingo can be traced back as far as 1530. The Italian lottery game titled "Lo Giuoco Del Lotto D'Italia" was considered to be the first version of the game, that game is still played on Saturdays in Italy. The game then made it's way onto French soil, changed a bit, and was called "Le Lotto" or "The Lotto". "Le Lotto" was a very exclusive game played by only the most well to do French persons.

Later in the 1800's variations of Bingo were found in Germany. The game at this stage was used as a children's game intended to improve their mathematical skills. The game was also used in conjunction with spelling and history lessons.

The game of Bingo continued to migrate, and evolve eventually making it's way into the North America in 1929 where it was first called beano. At small fairs, bingo callers would choose a disc from a cigar box, the disc would have a number on it, and beano players would place a bean on the corresponding number on their own bingo cards. Hence the name "Beano".

A salesman by the name of Edwin S Lowe first renamed the game bingo from beano when apparently a bingo player yelled "BINGO" by mistake, instead of saying "beano". Lowe then hired a Columbia University math professor, Carl Leffler. Leffler was to assist Lowe in the creation of bingo card combinations, increasing the number of possible outcomes.

Going into 1930 Leffler had created more than 6,000 bingo cards, and according to some recollections, went mentally insane later.

 

Today bingo players play in bingo halls around the world, largely charity driven, as well as online, at various bingo halls that allow players to deposit via Neteller, or credit cards others prefer bingo sites accepting PayPal to fund online bingo accounts.

Whichever account funding method bingo players choose, they ultimately meet up inside the online bingo room friends from around the world to not only play bingo online, but to join each other in chat games, where they win free bingo cards, and just to gossip, hang out, spend a few hours breaking up the day with freinds.