History of Housie
Did you know that Housie has its roots in 16th-century Italy? Find out more in this fascinating history of Housie.
Lotto Game
Housie began as the Italian national lottery in the 16th-century. By the 1770s, rich dignitaries and the elite classes of France were playing Housie, where it was called ‘Le Lotto’. The game then spread to other European countries, and soon there were many people playing this popular lotto game.
Much later, in the 19th-century, the game reached Germany where it was used in children’s games as a learning tool. It is still widely used as a Math learning tool even today.
It was only when the game reached the United States in the early 1900s that the game really started to become ‘Bingo’ as it’s known today.
Housie Inventor
In 1929 a New York toy salesman and future Housie inventor Edwin Lowe, came across the game at a carnival in Germany, where he saw that participants were marking their card numbers with beans.
When he asked them what they were playing, they told him that game was called ‘Beano’.
While he was watching, one of the players shouted out, “Bingo!” instead of “Beano!” in his excitement, giving it the name it has today.
Lowe watched a few more games and saw how much the players enjoyed it, and took the game back to the US with him.
The game reached a new level when a priest in Pennsylvania started using it to raise money for his church. Noticing that the game only contained 24 cards, he mentioned this to Lowe, who decided to make more combinations for the cards.
Lowe found a Mathematician called Carl Leffler, who struggled to find more combinations as he progressed, but successfully produced 6,000 bingo cards, but according to the history of Housie, went insane in the process.
This change caused the game to become much more popular, and by 1934, about 10,000 games of Bingo took place worldwide each week.
The game then spread back to Europe and other continents, where it was adapted to become the 90-ball Housie enjoyed in the UK, New Zealand and Australia.
Now that you know more about the history of Housie, find out how the game is played by visiting the Playing Housie page.
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