February 25, 2015 - Lethbridge Sun Times - page 41 SUNTIMES Game of bingo celebrates 85th birthday this year
Popular game’s roots can be traced back to 1500s
METRO NEWS SERVICE M
odern bingo has evolved into a popular form of entertainment that can now be played in various ways. Whether playing
for fun or money, thousands of people enjoy testing their luck at this game of chance. The game of bingo can be traced back to
1530 and an Italian lottery called, “Lo Giuocco del Lotto D’Italia,” which Italians still play every Saturday. The game eventually became popular in France, Germany and North America. In the United States, players played their
own variation of the lotto game featuring numbered cards and beans. The caller would pull small, numbered disks from an old cigar box and yell out the number. Players checked their cards for the number and would place a bean over the number if they had a match. When a sequence of numbers was covered, the winner would shout “Beano!” In December of 1929, New York toy
salesman Edwin Lowe happened upon beano being played at a Georgia carnival and thought it would make a great tent or carnival game. After testing out the game in his native
New York, Lowe ran across a woman excited about the prospect of winning. But instead of shouting “beano,” she called out “Bingo!” That prompted Lowe to name his game “Bingo.” While bingo started to gain popularity,
some organizations saw potential to turn a profit. A Pennsylvania priest approached Lowe about using bingo as a means to get his church out of some dire financial straits. Lowe set out to find a way to create a
greater combination of numbers on the bingo cards to be workable on games that were larger in scale. He commissioned an elderly mathematics professor named Carl Leffler and requested the professor create 6,000 new Bingo cards with nonrepeating number groups. The cards were increasingly difficult to produce as the number combinations dwindled. By the time the task was completed, Professor Leffler had gone insane. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo
games were played each week in churches and elsewhere all across North America. Today it is estimated that more than $90 million is spent each week on bingo in North America. Online bingo now enables tech-savvy
people to play bingo on their computers, phones and tablets. Despite concerns that it might affect the business of traditional bingo halls, electronic bingo actually has only reinforced the popularity of all forms of the game. Electronic bingo is also now emerging as
a popular way to play the game. Instead of paper bingo tickets, players use some sort of electronic device to record the numbers as they are called. Electronic bingo invites an entirely new
audience to the game, attracting younger players who enjoy the technological aspect of game play. Bingo may be turning 85 this year, but its
popularity has remained relatively constant since the game was introduced. Anyone can celebrate bingo’s birthday by visiting a bingo hall and playing. You just may walk away with a bingo bounty.
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