Are you a fan of bingo? This is actually a game that has been around for a very long time now. Many of us remember learning it and playing it as children. Did you know that the history of bingo includes such interesting things such as dried beans, mad professors and stuttering girls? To know what we mean, you need to know a short history of bingo.

The origins of bingo can go back as far as 16th century Italy where it was introduced as a lottery game to Italians. It came to North American in the late 1920s and was called Beano. A toy maker from New York names Edwin S. Lowe was responsible for discovering the game, changing it to Bingo and making it popular in the US.

Lowe discovered the game at a county fair near Jacksonville, Georgia and purchased some beano equipment. He then hosted friendly beano games at his home in New York and one night, an excited winner stuttered out the words “Bingo” when she completed her row. This gave Lowe the idea of how he would change the game.

This is how beano originally became Bingo but it would undertake one more big change shortly after. It was discovered when the game was used in a church fundraiser that there wasn’t enough variation in the cards which would cause there to be too many winners in big games. So Lowe hired Professor Carl Leffler, a mathematician from Columbia University to help him create 6,000 bingo cards.