Bingo, a form of lottery is a very simple and easy game played by millions of people all over the world. The history of Bingo takes us back to Italy in the sixteenth century where it originated as Lotto, a direct descendant of Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia.
Traveling to the French court in the eighteenth century, origin of Bingo in America is stated to be in the early twentieth century. It is interesting to note that today the Italian State lottery is indispensable to the government's budget, contributing in excess of 75 million dollars to its budget.
Bingo history starts with “Beano”, another name for Bingo as people shouted beano when they completed a sequence or pattern of numbers. Players were given cards with numbers printed randomly on them, which had to be completed in a predefined sequence. Numbers between one and ninety were called out. The winner was the person who was able to complete the sequence first.
History of Bingo takes us back to 1778, when the game arrived in France and was met with the same excitement, although with some disapproval from the Church. By the 1800s, lotteries had spread all over Europe.
Bingo reached the United States in the 1920s and became known as "beano", as players used pinto or lima beans to mark their cards. It was first played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. Bingo history states that a toy salesman, Edwin S. Lowe from New York , renamed it "bingo" after he overheard someone accidentally yell "bingo" instead of "beano”. The new term struck as a wonderful marketing opportunity to Lowe, whop later become known as “Father of bingo” .Hiring a Columbia University math professor, Carl Leffler, to increase the number of combinations in bingo cards, by 1930, around 6,000 different bingo cards had been invented. Thus began the first steps towards marketing the game in New York and the US.
The game's popularity spread very quickly across the country, especially in the rural areas. Bingo is popular everywhere, from small church parishes, to schools, to online tournaments and literally all over the world today.
With the advent of the Internet, bingo is available online to anyone from anywhere. As chances of winning are more in online bingo, it has taken the online gaming industry by storm, generating revenues in the tens of millions of dollars. Today, Bingo is everywhere and has come a long way since its origin in 15th century. The history of Bingo is special indeed.