Bingo History

Bingo, originally called ‘Beano’, was played at county fairs with a caller drawing numbered discs from a cigar box and players marking their cards by placing a ‘bean’ over the numbers called. If they were to win, they would shout ‘beano’.

The history of bingo dates back as far as 1530 to an Italian lottery called “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia. The game of bingo then moved into France in the late 1770’s but was primarily played by the wealthy. The game then made its mark in Germany amongst children for education purposes. The game of Bingo moved to US in 1929 as ‘Beano’ The name, ‘ bingo ‘ was developed through a mistake. A bingo player at a county fair yelled ‘ bingo ‘ instead of ‘beano’ and thus, BINGO was the new name.

Edwin Lowe took the game of beano and redeveloped into Bingo. He worked with a man named Carl Leffler to help him to increase the games capabilities. By 1930, there were over 6000 different bingo cards.

The game of bingo attracted a catholic priest as a means of fundraising for the church. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played weekly. Today, over $90 million is spent on bingo each week in the US alone.

Many land bingo halls now use paper sheets where bingo players can use an ink dauber to mark the called bingo numbers, these numbers are in a sealed unit where air is blown from the bottom and a suction at the top. Once the ball has been sucked up it rotates on a disc and is shown up on a television screen. Some land Bingo Halls now also have a video bingo machine,l where the called bingo numbers are automatically posted on their bingo video machine in front of them.

Thanks to our world of technology, bingo lovers can now play online bingo from the comfort of their home. Playing bingo online has become a very popular pastime throughout the world. There are thousands of online bingo sites ranging from FREE to some very large cash prizesand awesome casino bonuses. To play bingo online is not as hard as some may think. Most of the work is done by the computer allowing the bingo player to have time and freedom to chat with other fellow bingo players.

Online casinos do not offer bingo. Bingo is somewhat very different to a gaming casino in that the bingo set up provides Chat Hosts who in fact run the show during the duration of the actual bingo game with side “chat games”. Bingo halls however do provide other games such as online gambling slots, scratch cards and keno which can be played at the same time that you are playing your bingo. The reason for this is that the bingo game is automated, and should you have the winning card/s a pop up will come onto your screen displaying the winners of that particular game.