The Beginning of the Beano Game

Bingo is a favorite game in America. In the early years of the nineteenth century it was known as Beano. It was not a usual name there but it was a famous past time. The game started in Italy actually. It was called then as Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia. It was Italy's first ever lottery and until now it is still operated in Italy.

At first the Italian Churches put a ban on this lottery however the decision was overruled by a huge number of supporters of the game who participated in a daily basis. The game became popular because of the critics. More people heard about the controversial game and more cities started playing it as well unit it reached all over Europe. The beano cards had twenty seven squares and there were four rows which had four cards that are blank. There were five cards with different numbers. This is very different to the new bingo game we now play today.

The numbers can range from one to ten on the primary column. Then eleven until twenty on the next and so on with ten more numbers until the last one has eighty one up to ninety. There was a bag made of cloth where a caller would draw a number and yell it out. Each participant should have card when the number is called they have to check it and cover it. The person who gets one whole column first wins.

Then in the eighteen hundreds many educators saw the game as a good teaching material for students especially in teaching mathematics. In 1929 a salesman named Edwin Lowe went to Jacksonville in Georgia for a business appointment. He went there and observed one carnival. He saw a group playing a lotto game being played where the numbers are made of wood and they are all played in the cigarette box where the caller will get them. The participants will look at their cards while they are listening and cover the number with a bean. The winner should shot "beano".

This inspired him and he went back to New York where he played it with some friends. One of his friends who were already winning forgot to shout the word beano and instead uttered bingo and from this he changed the name of the game and called it bingo. Bingo since then became a worldwide phenomenon and millions of people now know this game.

Lowe envisioned the game to be a huge money maker for him. He began setting up a company and started designing his cards and selling them. He made the game more complicated by adding more numbers with a mathematician helping him named Carl Leffler.