Bingo was first played in 1530, when the Italians created a national lottery called this lottery is still being played every Saturday in Italy. By 1778 the French had adapted the game making small changes including some to the the card which they divided into three horizontal and nine vertical rows. The vertical rows contained numbers from 1 to 10 in the first row, 11 to 20 in the second row, etc..., up to 90. No two Lotto cards were the same.
The Germans also played a version of the game in the 1800s, but they used it as a childs game to help young students to learn math, spelling and history. By 1929 the games popularity had spread to the USA. where a variation of bingo was played horseshoe shaped table covered with numbered cards and dried beans. Players marked their cards by placing a dried bean over the number. Once they had completed a line, the player called out Beano.
Beano quickly caught on and became renamed Bingo. The early versions of the game were great fun but produced five or six winners which was a slight problem. This was solved by new Bingo cards with non repeating number groups being designed. When bingo started being played in churches, to raise funds, it became increasingly popular.
In the UK the situation was different, and the game did not become widely known until 1960, when the Gaming Act passed by Parliament in that year permitted such games in members-only establishments. The following year the game of Bingo was brought over from the USA by Eric Morley, the man who was also responsible for the development of the Miss World competition Across Britain there were many large buildings that had been rendered obsolete by the rise of the television theaters, cinemas and dance halls. Many of these required little modification to turn them into Bingo halls, and some buildings played a dual role as cinema or Bingo Hall, depending on the night of the week.
British Bingo Halls were far more plush that their American counterparts, and the theatrical feel was further enhanced by the preferred British method of coming up with the numbers. American clubs simply drew numbers from a bag. In the UK, glass cabinets were fitted with fans, filled with numbered ping-pong balls to produce the numbers.
In 1968 another gaming act was passed allowing clubs to play prize and cash Bingo via tabletop coin slots, as well as establishing a Gaming Board to regulate Bingo clubs, which were proving to be highly popular. Now the latest development and a revolution in Bingo history is the appearance of on line Bingo which has taken the internet by storm.
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