Bingo!

Fun and Profitable

Bingo is a form of lottery and is a direct descendant of Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia. When Italy was united in 1530, the Italian National Lottery Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia was organized, and has been held at weekly intervals to this date.

It was reported in the French press in 1778 that Le Lotto had captured the fancy of the intelligentsia. In the classic version of Lotto, which developed during this period, the playing card used in the game was divided into three horizontal and nine vertical rows. Each horizontal row had five numbered and four blank squares in a random arrangement. The vertical rows contained numbers from 1 to 10 in the first row, 11 to 20 in the second row, et cetera, up to 90. No two Lotto cards were alike. Chips numbered from 1 to 90 completed the playing equipment. Players were dealt a single Lotto card then the caller would draw a small wooden, numbered token from a cloth bag and read the number aloud. The players would cover the number if it appeared on their card. The first player to cover a horizontal row was the winner.

In December 1929, New York toy salesman, Edwin S. Lowe, was driving to Jacksonville, Georgia to set up for his next day's sales appointments. He had set up his own toy company with two employees before the stock market crash of ’29. Soon after, the market crashed and the outlook for his struggling firm looked bleak.

On his way to Jacksonville, Lowe came upon a country carnival. All of the carnival booths were closed except one, which was packed with people. Lowe pushed his way through the crowd and saw that the action centered on a horseshoe shaped table covered with numbered cards and beans. The game being played was a variation of Lotto called Beano. The caller pulled small numbered wooden disks from a cigar box and, at the same time, called the number aloud. The players responded by checking their cards to see if they had the number called; if so, they would place a bean on the number. This sequence continued until some someone filled a line of numbers on their card horizontally, vertically or diagonally. If the line was filled, they would shout "Beano!" The winner received a small Kewpie doll.

The pitchman told Lowe that he had run across a game called Lotto in Germany the previous year. He figured it would make a good carnival game. He made a few changes and called it Beano. The game proved to be a crowd pleaser and profitable so that on his return to the United States, he continued to work the game on the carnival circuit.

Back at home in New York, Lowe bought some dried beans, a rubber numbering stamp and some cardboard. He set up the game in his apartment and acted as pitchman. His friends were soon hooked on Beano. During one session Lowe noticed that one of his players was close to winning. She got more excited as each bean was added to her card. Finally there was one number left - and it was called! The woman jumped up, became tongue tied, and instead of shouting "Beano," stuttered "Bingo!"

The earliest Lowe Bingo game came in two variations - a 12-card set for one dollar and a two dollar set with 24 cards. The game was an immediate success.

Although the name Bingo could very well have been trademarked, the game itself, having come out of the public domain, had little chance of being protected. Imitators came out of the woodwork once the success of Lowe's game was evident. Lowe was very gracious about the whole affair. He asked his competitors to pay him a dollar a year, and to call their games Bingo, too.

Several months after Bingo hit the market, Lowe was approached by a priest from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The Father had a problem in his parish. A fast thinking parishoner had come up with the idea of using Bingo as a way to get the church out of its financial troubles. The priest had put the scheme into operation after having bought several sets of Lowe's $2.00 Bingo game. However, problems developed immediately when it was found that each game produced half a dozen or more winners.

Lowe could immediately see the tremendous fund raising possibilities of Bingo, but at the same time, he realized that to make the game workable on this large of a scale, a great many more combinations of numbers would have to be developed for the cards. To accomplish this, Lowe sought the services of Carl Leffler, an elderly professor of mathematics at Columbia University. Lowe's requested the professor to devise 6,000 new Bingo cards with non repeating number groups. The professor agreed to a fee that remunerated him on a per card basis. As the professor progressed on his project, each card became increasingly difficult. Lowe was impatient, and toward the end the price per card had risen to $100. Eventually, the task was completed.

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