The Origins Of Bingo

The game of bingo is thought to originate from the 16th century lottery called ‘Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia’ which was introduced in the year 1530. This lottery is still played to this very day in its native country of Italy. In the 1700s the French then developed their version of ‘Le Lotto’ which was extremely popular among the upper class. The French version involved a caller who drew wooden discs numbered 1 to 90 from a bag and called out the numbers to players.  Next to follow was Germany; however they used it primarily as a tool for educational purposes helping students to learn maths and spelling.

It was only in 1929 that the now well known game of bingo was introduced in North America when Edwin S Lowe discovered the game of beano. This game was like Le lotto with a caller drawing numbers, but beano also gave the players a card with squares and each time a number was called out, the matching numbered square would be marked with a bean. It is thought that the name bingo stuck when an excited player shouted out ‘bingo’ rather than ‘beano’.

Today bingo is an international game played by millions all over the world and big brand names such as The Sun and Littlewoods have their own bingo sites. People have now started to play bingo on their own terms by logging onto online bingo games at home in order to win their pay outs.

16th March 2009