Bingo Weekend Special@Harrys Bingo

The history of bingo is a long one, and often thought of as a game that is played at churches and other land based establishments. Just when bingo began depends on what country a person looks at, if it is said to have begun as early as the 1500’s in Italy and spread throughout Europe during the later half of the 1700’s, and reached the United States in the early 1900’s. However, the game bingo also had a name change when it reached the United States, prior to its arrival there it was known as Beano. When the game reached the shores of the United States it was brought by a touring company from Germany and with the name change given the game a few of the rules also were changed including the ability to win vertically, diagonally and horizontally.

According to research the way this game entered the church was due to a priest and some parishioners in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania who thought it would be a way to provide needed money to the church. The way bingo was being played in these early years in the United States when it was played at the church they found there were many winners for each game and this was due to the fact that there were only 24 bingo cards that were used for this game. The priest not to be daunted from using this game in his church contacted a man by the name Lowe, this man realized the amount of funds that bingo could provide the church. He in turn contacted a professor of mathematics from Columbia University named Carl Leffler who found a way to make bingo cards using random numbers thereby increasing the amount of different cards that could be used for playing bingo in the church.

The game of bingo became a regular game at many churches after this in America to provide the extra funds they often needed for the church and it is still played at many churches drawing a large crowd until many bingo players began to play the game at online bingo halls, but it is still often found as a weekly game at many churches.

This very old game of Beano who has traveled the oceans and had name and game changes went from being a game to a way for many churches to earn the extra money it took to keep them open. It also gave their parishioners a way to have fun, visit with their fellow church members and support their church in a way that differed from the other methods churches used to make extra funds.