Way back in 1929 a new game called Beano hit the carnivals in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Beano was almost exactly the same as the bingo game we now love to play. Players were sold pieces of card with numbers on and as the caller shouted out the numbers they would mark their cards.
FACT: Beano got it's name because players used dried beans not daubers to mark their cards!
One of the people watching this new Beano game being played in Atlanta was New York Salesman Edwin Lowe. He saw the players marking their cards and shouting 'Beano!' when they'd got a line and realised what massive mass-market potential the game had.
When Edwin Lowe went back home to New York he got his pals playing this new exciting Beano game and it proved a big hit with them too.
One of Lowe's lady friends got so into the game that she accidentally screamed 'Bingo!' when she won and that's how Beano came to be known as Bingo.
FACT: Lowe was a real all American Entrepreneur and he saw Bingo as a way to make money so he told other companies running Beano games that they could call their's Bingo too- if they paid him $1 year!
When the 1940's came there were thousands of bingo games being played all over America every single week and since then Bingo's popularity has grown and grown.
Here in the UK in 1960 a new law was created which encouraged companies to create their own bingo clubs. Once that law was passed us Brit's just played more and more bingo and eventually it became even more popular than it was in America!
