by Bruce Whitehill
2004
Hundreds of games are introduced into the marketplace every year in this country. All of them are touted as being “new,” and “the best game since…” whatever good game of recent vintage people still remember. But most of the games never see a second year of production. And many of them aren’t new at all, but are revisions and variations of games that have been around for ages. The popular game of OTHELLO, for example, won an award for the “best new game” (in the U.S.) in 1976, yet it was in vogue here in the 1950s under the name of REVERSI–a title it was given when it first came to the U.S. from England in the 1880s.
Another example is the game MANCALA, or WARI, which re-emerges every so many years with a different look or title, and yet it is considered to be one of the first board games, around 7000 years old. Similarly, the game of SENAT, found in 1922 in the tomb of King Tut is known to be from about 3000 B.C. The origin of games can be traced back to many countries and continents, and games have been used for education and moral teaching, as well as recreation, for thousands of years.
The significance of all the early, sometimes ancient games, is that they were eventually brought into the United States and manufactured by American companies. As might be expected, most of the first American-made games were based on ideas brought over from Europe, especially Britain, though the games may have originated in Africa or the Orient. Games of travel, history, and geography were said to have been advertised in the Pennsylvania Packet as early as July 31, 1775, but it is presumed these games were of British manufacture. Although American-made playing cards were used in Colonial America, card games using special cards were not manufactured in the United States until the late 1700s or early 1800s. American-made board games did not appear until much later. (The American Indians played games by patterning gameboards into the dirt and using implements of the earth or carving them out of wood or bone.) .
It was in 1843 that commercially-produced American-made card games became widespread. In that year, W. & S. B. Ives of Salem, Massachusetts, published DR. BUSBY, probably the country’s first popular card game. DR. BUSBY was a “game of families,” similar to games in Europe. Small printing and lithography companies, able to produce card games inexpensively through their printing operations, added games to their line of prints and paper goods. As a result, many of the box covers of nineteenth century games read “Published by…,” rather than “Manufactured by….” Before 1860, card games were hand-colored in what may have been one of the earliest assembly lines: a number of artists worked on each card, each artist painting only one color.
Card games often employed small question and answer cards on subjects such as history, geography, or literature. These were the early games that helped educate America’s youth. Card games were relatively simple to produce, but the manufacture of board games required much more skill and substance. The earliest gameboards were printed on paper, or on linen backed paper. The earliest known American-made board game, TRAVELLERS’ TOUR THROUGH THE UNITED STATES, published by F. & R. Lockwood in 1822, was made by pasting a lithographed sheet on a piece of cardboard, hence the name board game. The practice continues, and what is interesting is that the 18″ x 18″ board size used in the 1870s or even earlier (Milton Bradley’s 1876 game of BAMBOOZLE for example) is the same size used for most of the gameboards today, a result of industry standardization in printing and manufacturing.
Many of the early games were strategy games that employed tactical maneuvers closely associated with warfare, the goal being to outmaneuver or outrace an opponent, to trap an opponent’s pieces, or to remove them from play. And many early games were morality games. The concept of rewarding good deeds or good luck and punishing bad deeds or bad luck was the theme of the popular SNAKES AND LADDERS, and influenced many early American games, including Milton Bradley’s first game, the CHECKERED GAME OF LIFE.
The MANSION OF HAPPINESS, published by Ives in 1843, was one of the earliest American morality games. A player who landed on space marked “Passion,” for example, had to return to “The Water”; the rule read: “Whoever gets in a Passion must be taken to the Water and have a ducking (sic) to cool him.” Following “an instructive moral and entertaining amusement” was this poem:
At this amusement each will find
A moral fit t’ improve the mind;
It gives to those their proper due,
Who various paths of vice pursue,
And shows (while vice destruction brings)
That good from every virtue springs.
Be virtuous then and forward press,
To gain the seat of happiness.
The game can best be summed up by two of its rules:
“Whoever possesses Piety, Honesty, Temperance, Gratitude, Prudence, Truth, Chastity, Sincerity, Humility, Industry, Charity, Humanity, or Generosity is entitled to advance…toward the Mansion of Happiness.
“Whoever possesses Audacity, Cruelty, Immodesty, or Ingratitude, must return to his former situation…and not even think of Happiness, much less partake of it.”
Another popular card game of the later 1800s was PETER CODDLES, a game of “conundrums,” in which sections left blank in a story were filled in with words or phrases written on small card strips; the first such game was copyrighted in 1858, and a series of games was produced by various companies, based on Peter Coddles’ trips to different states. In 1861, August Smith invented what was to become one of the most widespread card games America, AUTHORS, a game still available today. Similar to the European QUARTET, which probably originated in Germany, AUTHORS was published by many firms over the years, as plagiarism was rampant until a new International Copyright law was passed in 1891. Each version of AUTHORS had its own list and illustrations of the popular authors of the time, so that a collection of these games from the 1860s to the present would represent nearly the complete body of classic American literature!
Because games were expected to be instructive and educational, a large proportion of the nineteenth century board games were about history and geography. Many of the early games were strategy games that employed tactical maneuvers closely associated with warfare. And many early games were morality games. The concept of rewarding virtue and punishing vice was the theme of the popular SNAKES AND LADDERS, and influenced many early American games.
Advances in commercial chromolithography around 1860, generating a new level of color artistry for gameboards, boxes, and illustrated cards, led to a “mass-marketing” of games, and contributed greatly to the proliferation of game companies. By the late 1890s, the United States was experiencing its first heyday of American boxed games.
