According to our research, the concept of a jackpot was first articulated around 1879, when a gambler explained to a court in Indiana the workings of the betting pool in a version of draw poker that requires a pair of jacks or better to "open the pot" and start the betting. "The money up is called the pot," explained the gambler, "and the man who holds jacks can require the others to bet him or to drop him out." If no one has a pair of jacks or better, the players add to the ante and the cards are reshuffled and redealt, resulting in an increasingly bigger pot to play for. Somewhere down the line, this pot became known as a "jacks pot," which in turn morphed into the single word "jackpot" and became a generic term for a big prize pool.
Bingo is a trickier one. The game we know today is a direct descendant of the first Italian state lottery, Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia, which was launched when Italy was united as a nation state in 1530 and still contributes a significant amount to the Italian government’s budget. The game then spread throughout Europe and finally across the ocean to the U.S., where a version called "Beano" became popular on the carnival circuit. In this game, the pitchman or caller pulled small numbered wooden disks from a box and players with that number on their card placed a bean over the number. Once someone had filled a whole line (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally), he shouted "Beano!" and received a token prize.
In the late '20s, this version caught the attention of a New York toy salesman named Ed Lowe, who saw its potential and introduced the game to his circle of friends. As the story goes, one night a group of them were playing the game at his home and one lady, whose card was filling up, got particularly excited. Apparently, when her one remaining number was called, the woman jumped up and in her frenzy couldn't quite pronounce the word "Beano," instead uttering a stuttered "B-B-BINGO!" This story seems a little farfetched to us, but it's the only version we've ever come across, so perhaps it's true.
"I cannot describe the strange sense of elation which that girl's cry brought to me," Lowe apparently reminisced afterwards. "All I could think of was that I was going to come out with this game, and it was going to be called Bingo!"
Lowe went on to finesse the game into the version we know and love today and the rest, as they say, is history.
