Origins of Bingo 

Bingo is one of those games that everybody seems to know how to play, mainly because many school children will have encountered the game at least once or twice during their time in education. Indeed, it is an incredibly multi-faceted game in actuality, being as home in care homes as it is in schools and even nightclubs these days. 

For this reason bingo stands out as probably the most unique gambling game the world has ever seen, because not only can it result in people winning multi million pound jackpots, it also helped famous figures such as Cristiano Ronaldo learn how to speak English. The history of bingo is also a remarkably multi-faceted story, and will take us on a trip around the world to fully understand it. Read on for an article on its origins and history at Barbados Bingo. 

16th Century Italy 

As most gambling historians will tell you, bingo is widely acknowledged to have its roots in a 15th Century Italian game called “Il Gioco del Lotto d’Italia”, which was a lottery style game that has several very close similarities with bingo and bingo scorecards. This game started as an attempt to try and culturally glue a historically divided Italian state together, and it proves to be incredibly popular. 

A version of the lottery is still going today, in fact, something that proves how much fun it really is. From Italy this rudimentary form of bingo slowly spread to France where it was played by wealthy businessmen under the name of “Le Lotto”. 

19th Century Germany 

By the 19th century the primordial version of bingo had spread all across the European continent, where it was mainly played as a gambling game. The exception of this was in Germany, however, where the authorities saw an opportunity to use the game in a different way to everybody else.

Instead of using bingo as a gambling game German schools started to use it as an educational tool, and this is why bingo is still played in schools around the world today. When you think about it it makes perfect sense: bingo is a perfect way to practice mathematical concepts, and the scorecards can easily be altered to teach pretty much everything. 

20th Century America 

By the early 20th century bingo had spread across the Atlantic to America, where it was played primarily as a fairground game called “Beano”. The origins of modern bingo start here, as a man called Edwin S. Lowe had a particularly clever idea to create a set of universal scorecards, and change the game to “Bingo”. 

He enlisted the help of a mathematician and within too long the classic 75 ball bingo scorecards we still use today were brought into existence. 

21st Century The World 

Throughout the 20th century bingo halls were popping up all over the world in response to the game’s popularity, and then online bingo came along and made it into a truly global phenomenon.