The History of Bingo

What we know today as Bingo is a form of lottery and called a direct descendant of Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia that was organized in 16th century and is still going strong. The European game of lotto, which had special playing cards with rows of numbers, had a caller who read numbers out loud. Players would cover the number if it appeared od their cards and the firstplayer to complete a horizontal row was deemed the winner.

A man named Ed Lowe saw a version of the game played in Jacksonville, Georgia in 1929. Players were using beans to cover the numbers. The operator of that game related the history of the game to Lowe, who, upon his return to New York, refined the game a bit.

Lowe, who owned a toy company, called the game Beano, which later evolved into Bingo because of an odd event. A woman, playing the game, was so excited as she covered all the numbers, that she yelled out Bingo instead of Beano. The name stuck. In 1973, by the waym Lowe sold his company to Milton Bradley for $26 million.

Ever wonder what the largest Bingo game in the nation might be? In 1934 at a Teaneck, NJ armory, 60,000 people showed up to play and 10,000 more had to be turned away.

William Fisk Harrah's father opened a chain of successful Bingo parlors in California in the 1930s. The operation was moved to Reno and became so successful that when the first Harrah's opened in 1946 it was dubbed The House That Bingo Built.