Gambling is at the heart of human nature. We love to take risks. It’s no stretch to imagine pair of cavemen eyeing up a woolly mammoth and betting with each other who could hit it with a rock. Where did bingo start and after online bingo, where is left to go?
The first acknowledgements of a bingo like game occur in Italy in the mid 14th century. It was the time of the unification and ‘Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia’ – The Clearance of The Lot of Italy.
Lo Giuoco del Lotto involves the drawing of five numbers, from a box of 90 at each of the ten traditional draw “wheels”, plus the Ruota Nazionale, the National “Wheel”. The ten traditional draw wheels are named after the following Italian cities: Bariums, Cagliar, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Turin, and Venice.
Word about the bingo game travelled to France from Italy in 1778. The Italian lotto uses cards that are split into nine vertical columns and three horizontal rows. Every row consists of five randomly arranged numbers and four empty squares. Every vertical column consists of 10 numbers.
Wooden chips, with the numbers one to 90, are placed inside a bag. One by one, the chips are extracted from the bag until one played completes a horizontal and becomes the winner. This bingo game garnered a great many fans during the 19th century on the continent of Europe.
Eventually, the bingo game reached the United States of America where it was a favourite with the travelling carnivals and their pitchmen. The carnie folk made the game even more fascinating by allowing players to win with horizontal, diagonal, and vertical patterns.
Beans were used to make the numbers and the game was called Beano. However, in the year 1929, a travelling toy salesman called Edwin Lowe invited his friends round to play the game because he thought there was some marketing potential in it.
In the excitement of the evening, one of the players shouted ‘bingo’ instead of ‘beano’ and the name stuck. Lowe produced his own game – Bingo – and its popularity has never ceased.
By 1934, about 10,000 bingo games are played every week. Today, in North America, more than $90 million is spent at bingo games every week.
Now – with the introduction of online bingo games, the popularity of this classic game is stronger than ever.
