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History of Bingo
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In the U.S., bingo was originally called "beano". It was a country fair game where a dealer would select numbered discs from a cigar box and players would mark their cards with beans. They yelled "beano" if they won.
The game`s history can be traced back to 1530, to an Italian lottery called "Lo Giuoco del Lotto D`Italia," which is still played every Saturday in Italy. From Italy the game was introduced to France in the late 1770s, where it was called "Le Lotto", a game played among wealthy Frenchmen. The Germans also played a version of the game in the 1800s, but they used it as a child`s game to help students learn math, spelling and history.
When the game reached North America in 1929, it became known as "beano". It was first played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe renamed it "bingo" after he overheard someone accidentally yell "bingo" instead of "beano". He hired a Columbia University math professor, Carl Leffler, to help him increase the number of combinations in bingo cards. By 1930, Leffler had invented 6,000 different bingo cards. [It is said that Leffler then went insane.]
A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approached Lowe about using bingo as a means of raising church funds. When bingo started being played in churches it became increasingly popular. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played weekly, and today more than $90 million dollars are spent on bingo each week in North America alone.
Lowe immediately realized the money-making potential for Beano. Upon his return to his home in New York, he created his own Beano game by procuring some beans, cardboard and a rubber number stamp. He invited friends to his apartment to play the game. There he saw the same excitement that he saw at the carnival. During the game, one player had accidently yelled out "Bingo" and the name stuck.
It was a priest from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania who began to promote playing bingo in churches. One the parishiners in his financially ailing church came up with the idea of using Bingo as a way to raise money for the church. But with only 24 unique cards to play with, the priest was finding that there too many winners for each game. The priest contacted Lowe about producing a large number of unique number combinations for the cards. Lowe recognized the fund-raising potential of the game and enlisted the help of a professor of mathematics at Columbia University named Carl Leffler. But the increased number of bingo cards was exactly what was needed to make the game a staple at churches across the country and a sound source of fund-raising.
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