Origins of Bingo

We're obsessed with all things bingo - and we know that you are too. So what better way to keep our fabulous community entertained in between online bingo games than by giving you the lowdown on the origins of this great past time! With your new found knowledge you’re bound to enjoy playing for a big bingo jackpot even more than before. When it comes to online bingo, UK players get great value at Mecca Bingo. Let’s take a look at how it all started...

Bingo timeline:

• 1530 - Bingo as we know it can be traced back to the 1530s, when the Italian Government set up a lottery-style game ‘Lo Giuco de Lotto’. It’s still going to this day and is played every Saturday.
  
  
• 1778 - ‘Le Lotto’ crossed the border to France by the late 1700s and resembled the bingo we have come to know and love, complete with playing card, tokens and numbers read aloud.
  
  
• Mid 1800s – These bingo-style games spread quickly throughout Europe in the 19th Century getting more and more popular. One version played had a lot of similarities to Bingo today. Players would receive a card with 3 horizontal rows and 9 vertical rows each filled with numbers and four blank squares. The ‘caller’ would then draw from a bag of wooden chips numbered 1 – 90. I bet you can guess the next part? The first person to cover one of the horizontal lines was the winner!
  
  
• 1880 - A similar version of the Lotto/Bingo game is used as an educational tool in Germany to help children learn their multiplication tables. Educational games such as this are still available to buy today.
  
  
• 1929 – At a carnival in 1929 near Atlanta, Georgia, a game called ‘Beano’ was played. American toy salesman Edwin Lowe watched as the players filled lines on their playing cards with dried beans. Love took the game back to New York and it was here that bingo was ‘born’. After one of his friends had filled a line they mistakenly shouted ‘BINGO’ amidst all the excitement! The name stuck and Lowe started charging his competitors $1 to use the Bingo name.
  
  
• 1930 – A year later and Lowe’s Bingo was now extremely popular. To make the game even better, Lowe convinced a maths professor, Carl Leffler, to expand the amount of number combinations. Professor Leffler designs 6,000 different bingo cards, each with a unique non-repeating number pattern. Urban legend says that after he had finished the task, he went insane!
  
  
• 1934 - A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approaches Lowe about using Bingo as a way of raising church funds. The charitable roots of bingo are born. An estimated 10,000 games are played weekly in 1934.
  
  
• 1940s – Bingo games spring up all over the USA, with thousands of games played every week.
  
  
• 1968 – The UK Gaming Act of 1968 formalises the game of bingo in the UK. As such, the first dedicated bingo halls start to appear.
  
  
• 1986 – The National Bingo Game is launched and to this day has given away over £900,000,000 in prize money.
  
  
• 2003 – The first online bingo UK site is launched, so players can play for big bingo jackpots and chat with their bingo buddies any time, day or night, 365 days a year.
  
  
• 2007 – Bingo is still going strong, with over 3 million players taking part in online and offline bingo every week – more than attend Premiership football matches!

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