Jewish Invention Myths: Bingo

Sometimes jewish invention myths are just quick throwaway claims like Stephen Pollard’s unsubstantiated aside at ‘The Jewish Chronicle’ that the jews invented Bingo. (1)

This is complete and utter hogwash and likely based on the fact a jew named Edwin Lowe popularised the game in the United States and gave it its modern name.

As Wikipedia – as much as I am loathe to use it – explains:

‘While working as a traveling toy salesman in December 1929, Lowe encountered a group at an Atlanta, Georgia carnival engaged in a game called Beano. Returning to his Brooklyn, NY, home, he organized a game with several friends, one of whom became so excited at winning, she shouted "Bingo!" The popularity of the game among his acquaintances prompted Lowe to print game cards, which he later sold under the name Bingo. He established the E. S. Lowe Company for the production of his Bingo game cards, which initially were released as 24-card sets. The company later increased the number of variations to more than 6,000 card combinations, adding to the game's popularity.’ (2)

So, in essence Lowe took an existing game called ‘Beano’ that he found in Atlanta in December 1929 added game cards to make it a formal game and renamed it ‘Bingo’ then sold it as if it were his own creation.

But what is ‘Beano’?

Well, it is an informal game of Bingo that used dried beans (hence ‘Beano!’) rather than formal game cards used by Lowe’s version which originated in the early 1920s in Pittsburgh. (3) However, he wasn’t the first to come up with a formal version of ‘Bingo’ as actually ‘Beano’ had already become ‘Bingo’ by 1924 as ‘Trip Saavy’ tells us:

‘Hugh J. Ward first came up with the concept of bingo in Pittsburgh and began running the game at carnivals in the early 1920s, taking it nationwide in 1924. He secured a copyright on the game and wrote a book of Bingo rules in 1933.’ (4)

Therefore, we can see that Hugh Ward was the creator of ‘modern’ Bingo not Edwin Lowe as he had copyrighted it in 1924 five years earlier than Lowe even saw Beano being played in Atlanta in 1929.

However where did Beano come from?

As it turns out Beano is probably an American version of a common Italian game called ‘Tombola’ – not to be confused with the English game ‘Tombola’ as they are not the same thing – which has nearly all the aspects of modern bingo but is – like Beano – a much more informal game that was probably invented some time around 1734 in Italy.

So, no: jews did invent Bingo.

The Italians and/or Hugh Ward did!

References

(1) https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/did-you-know-that-jews-invented-everything-g0z36e86

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_S._Lowe#Biography

(3) https://popularpittsburgh.com/pittsburgh-firsts/

(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20170912192743/https://www.tripsavvy.com/pittsburgh-facts-and-firsts-2706998

(5) https://www.learnitalianpod.com/2006/06/26/40-lets-play-tombola/