Let's be honest, the question "Where did bingo originate from.?" has been contemplated, at least once by every bingo player the world over. And there are millions of players around the world. Bingo players claim to lay title to the "Worlds Most Popular Game" and there is every reason to believe them.

Bingo is played in every continent and in 90% of the Worlds Countries although the exact origins of the game are not exactly definable. Bingo goes by other names like, Housie Housie, Tombola, but the idea and outcome of the game is the same, i.e. Cover a row of numbers with counters before any other player can do so to win a prize.

As for bingo's origins we do have some leads. It is similar to the Italian game of Tombola which was played once per year on Christmas Eve by families playing together, who upon winning would shout when they had made a row first. The traditional game players used cards covered using beans [Fagioli] or pieces of orange peel. Modern tombola cards are made of plastic with slots which can be closed down when a number is called. It is believed that current day bingo may have come from an Italian Lottery Game, Lo Giuoco Del Lotto Ditalia which originated in 1530 and is still played today. In the late 1700's "Le Lotto" appeared in France. It's form and style is similar to the "Bingo" game we know today. Using playing cards, tokens and numbers read aloud.

In 1800 the German Education System adapted Lotto to for lottery games to teach children muliplication tables.

From there we take a time jump to the next "Bingo" development located in the United States where in 1929 a game called "Beano" was played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. A toy salesmen watched the excitement generate and was so taken by it, he took the game to New York to introduce it to his friends. The toy salesman's name was Edwin Lowe. Legend has it that one of Mr. Lowe's players yelled "Bingo" in her excitement instead of "Beano" when she made her first row.

The game was so popular that Edwin Lowe's bingo started with Lowe asking competitors to pay him $1 per year to allow them to call their games bingo as well. Later Lowe commissioned Carl Leffer an elderly math's professor at Columbia University to develop his bingo system. By late 1930 Leffer had developed 6000 bingo cards with non-repeating number groups. He had successfully completed the commissioned work and then went insane.

Edwin Lowe promoted Bingo, printing cards day and night. He commented one day that "We use more newsprint than the New York Times.", which had a reported 5 million readers at the time. The game further spread in the U.S. when Lowe began to work with a Catholic priest from Pennsylvania to establish the game. After a few years, bingo had spread up and down the East coast of America and was heading West. By 1934 it is estimated that 10,000 bingo games were played every week and that was at the height of the Depression. By 1995 the American public would spend $88 million each week on bingo.

Just how Australia came to embrace bingo is uncertain but given that bingo was played in the United States and England it would not be hard to imagine that the game was transported to Australian shores by traveler's from those countries. Australian bingo was called Housie Housie in the 1950's and it is known that the Queensland Ambulance Brigade would erect a large tent just over the Queensland border, where Twin Towns is today, and play using corn pieces to place on the cards as the numbers were called.

Over the years there have been many ways to mark numbers from bottle tops to coloured markers and dabbos. There have been just as many ways to draw numbers from 1 - 90. There have been numbered sequences of wood pulled out of a small bucket - ping pong balls pulled up through an air blower - wooden balls spun around in a tumbler and falling into a metal rack.

In those days people sat at tables in a circular formation approx 20 foot in diameter. In the centre of the circle were the numbered boxes. You paid some pence, perhaps sixpence for a card of numbers similar to what is sold today with a handful of corn. Each person would throw a white ball about the size of a tennis ball, where it would land in one of the numbered boxes. Everyone would put their piece of corn on their number until a line or house was filled. The ball was then retrieved, passed on to the next person to throw. One person, one throw etc.

Each game took quite a while of course, so some people understandably got a bit hungry and ate their corn. Luckily more was always available.

These days Bingo or Housie continues to be popular. Electronic equipment, computers, improved facilities have all combined to keep attracting crowds, and lets face it, the crowds are just getting bigger.