History of Bingo Games


The game that we enjoy today, “online bingo” has its origins connected to years back when the game was played as Italian Lottery and was known as Lo Giuoco del Lotto Dltailia. The games made its debut in 1530, and were generally played on Saturdays. Managing to be a significant source of entertainment, the game got introduced in France in 1770, where it was called “Le Lotto” – game played amidst the rich Frenchmen. Even the Germans played a version of this game in 1800, but it was more of like assisting children to study mathematics. Later on the games moved on to North America, in the year 1929 and got to be known as beano. There the games were called as “beano”. The games were initially played at a Carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. The games were then renamed as “bingo” by the New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe, when he overheard someone who accidentally called out bingo instead of beano.

He then hired a Mathematics professor Carl Leffler from Columbia University, to help him to increase certain combinations available on bingo cards. In the year 1930, Leffler invented 6,000 types of different bingo cards. Further to this is a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania inspired Edward Lowe for using bingo games as means of raising funds. It is from here the games hooted to popularity. During the 1930’s, the games stormed through churches and even Edward Lowe received numerous letters seeking advice to be helped with bingo games, and then Lowe came out with the first bingo manual known as “Instructional Manual”. Further to this, he published The Blotter- a bingo newspaper that got distributed across 35,000 subscribers. It was in the year 1934, when there were more than 10,000 games played every week.

Ever since then the games famed to popularity by being framed at bingo clubs and halls. Gamers from different places visited these halls just for the sake of spending time playing bingo games. In the halls, players used to purchase their bingo cards and there used to be a caller in the halls who would call out the numbers manually. And, even players had to manually strike off the numbers on cards. Now, this option we see has got transformed through the online mode. In the online form, all functionalities are affected by the use of Random Number Generators.