Printed Bingo Cards
Category: Bingo
Online bingo has taken the world by storm, with bingo websites popping up in different countries and bingo adverts gracing our television screens, billboards and magazines, but we rarely wonder about how bingo ever got started.
The earliest bingo game registered in history was in 1530 and it was in Italy. Since, it has been adapted by different cultures and has been known as “lotto”, “beano” and “Lo Giocco de Lotto”. After the 16th Century, Bingo slowly made it’s way over to the UK and became a popular hobby.
That is when it started to take form and be just like the type we play today. In the UK, bingo was played by dividing tickets into 3 rows and 9 columns, with each row holding 5 numbers and just like today, tickets were grouped into groups of 6, forming a “strip”. The most important thing about grouping them into strips was the fact that every single number (1-90) had to be present on each strip, developing the concept that “everyone has the numbers, but who has them in that winning order?”.
Bingo was mostly known as “beano” and “housey” until the 19th century and it was then the word “bingo” was born. History states a girl got so excited at winning, she jumped and screamed “bingo!” instead of “beano” and from that moment on, the name of the game stuck at the name we all love and trust, Bingo!
It was in the 19th century that 75 ball bingo was invented too, in Atlanta. A toy salesman had seen a beano game being played and hired a maths professor to come up with as many number combinations for 75 ball bingo for tickets– he created 6,000!
Who would have known we have been dabbing ancient history!