Bingo Through the Years

The game of bingo cards approached into being in the 16th century. The game started as a nationwide lottery in Italy called Lo Giucco del Lotto D’Italia. In spite of the opposition of the Catholic Church the game quickly spread through Europe. The game spread from France to the United States in the 1770s where it was also extremely popular with the population. The game developed differently in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, the game was played with discs with numbers on them being drawn from a cigar box. The players covered their numbers with beans. The winner would call out Beano when he covered the required numbers. A toy salesman paid a mathematician to develop cards with different combinations of numbers. He developed more than six thousand different cards. The toy salesman, Edwin Lowe, renamed the game bingo and began to market the game mostly to Catholic parishes that used the game as fundraisers during the Depression.

The game in the United State is based on seventy-five numbers, with the letters B, I, N, G and O printed above the five by five number grid. This configuration lends itself to many different patterns that can be used in the game. In the United Kingdom the game is played with ninety numbers. The tickets have nine columns with three lines having five numbers per line on them. The online bingo game game is played for one line, two lines and three lines, or housie