Now you’ve got it!
The history of the game we know as “Bingo” dates back to 1530s Italy and the country’s “Lo Giuoco del Lotta d’Italia” national lottery. In the late 1700s, the French upper class modified ‘le lotto’ to include the numbered cards still popular today. By the 1800s, variations of the game had migrated to Germany and were used as instructional devices.
The early 1900s saw the game introduced to the United States via the traveling carnival circuit. Called “Beano,” it made use of numbered cards with called numbers covered by dried beans. Enter an enthusiastic, tongue-tied winner, and the name “Bingo” was born. The game transformed from carnival craze to fundraiser after a Wilkes-Barre, PA. church used it as a means of resolving its financial troubles and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, Bingo is played everywhere from licensed bingo halls to home computers, with more than $90 million spent on the game in North America alone.