Nothing could be more curious and strange then the history of Bingo. This game started way back in 1530 when Italy was united and came out with Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia which was the National Lottery and is played in Italy to this day funding the government’s coffer with much needed cash.
It travelled to France and captured the imagination of the citizens by 1778 and was called Le Lotto. It migrated to Germany in the 1800’s and became very valuable as a learning aide for children for mathematics, spelling, history and other educational material.
In December 1929 a tired toy salesman Ed Lowe from New York sauntered into a carnival a few miles off Jacksonville and espied a crowd at a booth while all other booths were closed. A version of this game was played where the number was called and the playing public would put a bean on the number called in their card. After a certain sequence was reached and a player had that sequence, he or she would call out Beano. The game was so enthralling for the denizen that they had to be literally shooed out at three am. Looking at the mesmerizing effect this game had on people he called up some friends to his apartment to play this game and made arrangement for rubber numbering stamp, some beans and some cardboards. The game had the same effect in this room which could be seen on the faces of players at the carnival. One of the ladies present at that game became so excited when the last number was called on her card that she stuttered Bingo instead of Beano and that’s how they say history was made.
Ed Lowe made some innovations and improvements to this game with the help of a mathematician Carl Leffler from Columbia University, when a priest approached Ed with the idea of Bingo to save the church form going under. The problem with the original Bingo was that there always a dozen or more winners. So with the help of the professor and they say at the cost of his sanity, Ed Lowe and his company came out with a winner. The game became so popular that more than ten thousand bingo games were played in a week and Ed Lowe’s firm with a thousand employees were hard pressed to dole out the game to the public and according to one estimate 90 million dollars are spent today playing this game and that too in North America alone.