History of Bingo

With the invention of the world wide web back in the November 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, it was a foregone conclusion that at some point Bingo would become big business online.

The game of Bingo originated in the 16th Century (around 1530 to be exact) in Italy. It was a game played at Country fairs where numbers were pulled from a cigar box. Players would mark off their numbers by covering them with beans. As with the game as we know it now, whoever marked all their numbers off first was the winner. This is where the original name “Beano” comes from.

It wasn’t until 1929 that “Beano” made it’s way to America. The name “Bingo” came from a mistake made by a winner when instead of shouting “Beano” he called “Bingo”! Imagine what we would all be yelling now in bingo halls across the globe if this person had had a potty mouth!!!

Edwin Lowe and Carl Leffler developed the game as we know it today in 1930. Imagine the time they took to develop over 6000 bingo cards, all unique in the number distribution. The phrase “patience of a saint” springs to mind. There are actually 552,446,474,061,129,000,000,000,000 possible bingo card combinations! Hoorah for number generators!

08/07/2008 10:01:16

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