Bingo
If you don't understand Italian, the words "Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia" will have very little meaning for you.
If you play bingo, then the words have some significance in your life.
Loosely translated, these words describe a version of the Italian lottery that has been in existence since the year 1530.
For those who regularly find themselves in a bingo hall,
this renaissance age lottery became the bingo game we are all so familiar with.
Of course this didn't happen overnight.
This lottery game traveled via immigration from country to country for centuries before somebody ever yelled the word "Bingo"
after lining up their tokens on what we would recognize as a modern bingo card.
By 1770 the game had traveled over the Alps and became a common activity among the French elite.
These well heeled Frenchmen knew the game as "Le Lotto".
It is probably for the best that the name Bingo had not yet attached itself to the game.
Historically speaking, the French upper crust was far too effete to play bingo in its modern form.
They would have scoffed at any game that involved yelling and waving bits of your anatomy around
after you have successfully filled your card.
You can do the same even when playing online bingo.
Of course what is good for the French is good for the German's.
In the 19th Century the game could be found in Germany.
For the most part it was free bingo,
played by school children in order to help them with their math, spelling,
and whatever other lessons a creative teacher could associate with the game.
The financial and lottery elements had pretty much been stripped from it.
Thanks to early French traders and a World War, the "Le Lotto" made it to the United States.
Here game was referred to as "Beano".
Presumably this moniker was given to the game because of the habit the Americans had of using beans
as tokens on their bingo cards.
It was also in the United States that the habit of yelling had become associated with the game.
It is a slip of the tongue that turned it from beano into the bingo game that millions know and love.
New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe was visiting a fair near Atlanta, Georgia in 1929,
when during a round of beano he heard some yell out "Bingo" instead of beano.
Whether this was a true slip of the tongue and not just the funny way that New York ears hears a Deep South accent
is up for debate, but Mr. Lowe took the name and ran with it.
Edwin Lowe collaborated with Columbia University math professor, Carl Leffler,
to come up with bingo cards that had dramatically more number combinations.
The two of them put their heads together and invented over 6000 different bingo cards.
This was the start of an industry. The bingo hall
became a familiar site in towns and cities across America.
The popularity of Bingo could not be held within the US borders, and soon the game came home to Europe.
A bingo renaissance occurred in Europe, and became especially popular in the in the UK.
Bingo UK is often referred to as "Housey Housey".
As technology moved on to the computer age, bingo followed other such games as poker, blackjack, backgammon, etc,
as they moved into cyberspace.
"Bingo Zone" is generally credited as being the first
online bingo site in history.
They offered free bingo to the world of online players.
As computers became as common a fixture in homes as a television set and a microwave,
the online bingo industry began to take off. The UK is by far the largest market for internet bingo.
Currently there are greater than 250 bingo sites out of the UK.
Many of them offer a number of variations on the game; bingo US and bingo UK are obviously the most popular forms.
Currently it is almost a billion dollar a year industry with no signs of slowing down.
Despite the popularity of internet bingo, there is plenty of room for growth in this industry.
A bingo site like www.silkbingo.com and its contemporaries in the industry only attract an estimated 1% of the bingo players
in the UK. Most still play bingo live and have not yet made the move to playing it in cyberspace.
That means that there is a deep well of live bingo players that can be tapped,
and most of them will eventually join the rest of online bingo community and play in the internet bingo.
For the best online bingo in cyberspace, play Bingo today!
