by Bruce Whitehill
Published November 2005 in Knucklebones games magazine.
Games have been an important part of life since people learned to use pictures and words. Games have been utilized to stimulate, communicate, educate, and entertain, and have provided competition for kings and contests for commoners. They have given spiritual guidance and moral instruction, and have left a record of the culture in which they thrived.
Most of us grew up with popular children’s games such as UNCLE WIGGILY and CANDYLAND, and nearly all of us have played PARCHEESI and CHINESE CHECKERS. But did you know that CHINESE CHECKERS was played as STAR CHECKERS (STERN HALMA) in the 1890s, and PARCHEESI was around in the 1860s? And that UNCLE WIGGILY was adapted from a series of children’s books after World War I, and CANDYLAND was first played at the end of World War II? Were you aware that MONOPOLY started as a folk game invented in 1904 to teach economic principles against monopolies?
When you played BATTLESHIP did you play the plastic Milton Bradley version or the pencil and paper game that dates back to WWI? Did you know that Milton Bradley, the most famous name in games, sold his first game in 1860? And that the name of the man who introduced PARCHEESI in 1867 was the same name that made SCRABBLE a century later? Or that more than 50 years before Parker Brothers sold MONOPOLY, George Parker was inventing games for adults?
The history of games is a fascinating story that covers from 165 years of commercial manufacturing in the United States to over 6000 years of games of the world. Here is how it began.
6000 years of history
Identifying the earliest dates and countries of origin of ancient games is difficult because games have evolved over the centuries, and sometimes the modern successor bears little resemblance to its early ancestor. Historians examine artifacts, remnants, implements, painted images, and any drawings or lettering that might help them reconstruct game boards or play patterns. Without written records, historians are left to speculate on a game’s time period, its method of play, its popularity, where it originated and where it wound up.
In 1922, a gameboard was unearthed in the tomb of King Tutankhamen where it had been buried for over 3200 years. The game, SENET (or SENAT), has been revived and is still played today, though the rules are a matter of conjecture, based on tomb paintings and a religious papyrus describing the game being played in the afterlife. (In addition to the “throwing sticks”—the forerunners of dice—used with the game, knucklebones were also sometimes used to play SENET.) While the appeal of SENET was confined primarily to Egypt, another game, THE ROYAL GAME OF UR, was popular all over the Ancient Near Eastern world beginning before 2000 B.C. Using cuneiform tablets housed in the British Museum, one of the historians and curators, Dr. Irving Finkel, was able to decipher the rules; they are most likely the oldest written game rules in the world.
Another ancient, rare game, HOUNDS AND JACKALS, also called THE PALM TREE GAME or GAME OF FIFTY-EIGHT HOLES, is from the second millennia B.C. Boards have been discovered in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Israel, but only one complete set of board and pieces has been found (in Thebes); it is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. MEHEN, the game of the snake, which is from before 3000 B.C., is a race game on a circular board with a path that spirals into the middle, and, like many games that followed, had a religious or magical significance, similar to the “modern” GAME OF GOOSE, a popular European game that originated in Italy in the 1500s.
Centuries ago, game boards were carved in wood, etched or drawn on stone and slate, sewn on fabric, or even woven into baskets. Stone, ivory, wood, seeds, clay and other natural substances were used as playing pieces as nature provided them or were carved and shaped into figures. Many early games were race games, others often two-player simulations of conquest, requiring the strategic capture or entrapment of an opponent’s pieces, or the positioning or alignment of your own. Like many games today, they provided mental stimulation and allowed for a competition in which the loser—unlike in some ancient sports—could remain unscathed. In some societies, board or table games were only for the nobility, the rich or the privileged; in other cultures, they were just for the men. Even today in parts of Africa and India, some games are restricted to certain sexes or groups.
One of the oldest games still played all over the world is MANCALA, a broad name used to include the games of WARI, OWARE, OWALE, CHUBA and others. Some historians consider these games to be as much as 7000 years old. The very popular game of BACKGAMMON goes back to the 1st century; it is a variation of an earlier game called TABULA—which, in Iceland, has the more colorful name of CHASING THE GIRLS. CHESS was said to have originated either in China before 200 A.D. or India in 600 A.D., whereas CHECKERS, called DRAUGHTS in Europe and elsewhere, dates back to the 12th century. In the U.S., CHECKERS is played on an eight by eight (spaces) board, whereas in some countries it is played on a 10 x 10—or even larger—board. Other traditional early games still played include Pachisi, a race game from India; the strategy game of Mill, also known as Mühle or Nine Mens Morris; another two-player strategy game, Fox and Geese, which had its origin around the year 1300, possibly in Iceland; and the Game of Goose, one of Europe’s most popular games, which originated around 1500. *1 Another world favorite, the game of DOMINOES has a more obscure beginning: it is probably Chinese, from between the 1st and 12th century. DOMINOES are considered “flattened dice,” and the play of the game, as with MAH JONGG, calls for the noisy smacking down of the tiles onto the table. *2
The commercialization of games
The Industrial Revolution began in England around 1760. As machinery reduced the long hours necessary to produce goods by hand, the amount of leisure time for workers increased. Advances in printing processes and the manufacture of paper allowed printed material, including games, to be made more cheaply. By the late 1700s, European companies were printing games on linen-backed paper or on regular paper. These early, commercially produced games were sold to those who could afford both the cost of the item and the time required to play. As most of these early games were made by printing companies as an offshoot of their printing business, games were referred to as having been “published” rather than “manufactured.” Even today in Europe, a game’s inventor is often called the “author.”
The first company to begin game production on a large scale was the English firm John Jaques & Sons. Originators of Happy Families, a “Rummy” style game, Tiddledy Winks, and Ludo, the European equivalent of America’s PARCHEESI, Jaques started producing games in the late 1700s and introduced the world to croquet and ping pong. *3 Jaques is still in operation, still run by a member of the Jaques family.
Through the first half of the 1800s, most of the board games played in North America came from England. Trade routes provided a pathway for games to reach other lands; the personal possessions and the memories of travelers served to establish games in new cultures. Trade restrictions imposed on Britain in 1809 may have prompted American concerns to produce their own games. The first known games manufactured in the U.S. were Traveller’s Tour Through the United States and Traveller’s Tour through Europe, both published in 1822 by F. & R. Lockwood, New York booksellers. It is a curious fact that only one or two other games have been found between 1822 and the games of W. & S.B. Ives that began in 1843. *10
The early American game companies: Ives and McLoughlin
Ives, a company from Salem, Massachusetts, was the first major publisher of games in the United States. The Ives family—D.P. & S.B. Ives, and H.P. Ives, and the Ives of the 1890s’ company of Ives, Blakeslee, & Williams—made games for fifty years. By 1898, most of the Ives line had been sold to Parker Brothers, another Salem-based company. Ives published the earliest board games of note, often with political or moral overtones: THE GAME OF POPE OR PAGAN, OR THE SIEGE OF THE STRONGHOLD OF SATAN BY THE CHRISTIAN ARMY, from 1844, and THE GAME OF THE STATES, OR, WHO’LL BE PRESIDENT, a year later. THE NATIONAL GAME OF THE AMERICAN EAGLE, from 1844, was a morality game that instructed, “Whoever possesses Patriotism (and) Integrity may advance… whoever possesses Penetration can proceed to Hope; whoever possesses or is guilty of Mendacity or Duplicity must move back.” *4
The games of this period reflected both the politics and the moral attitudes of the time. Dice were not used because they were seen as “tools of the devil,” and a “teetotum”—a spinning top device—was substituted. In fact, dice can still be unearthed in Civil War battlefields because soldiers going into battle would remove the dice from their pockets, lest they die in battle and the dice sent to their families with their other personal effects.
Many of the board games, primarily race games, had spaces on the board marked with attributes, actions, and attitudes, and allowed players landing on a space marked with words of virtue and integrity to move forward, whereas landing on a space of vice sent the player backward. This was the same principle used in the early popular children’s game of SNAKES AND LADDERS that evolved into Milton Bradley’s CHUTES AND LADDERS, first published in 1943.
Ives’ most famous board game was THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS, from 1843. The number of boards that can be found today suggests it was popular. The game offers a clear indication of the sentiment of the time. *5 The tone can be summed up best by two of the “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.”
Parker Brothers, the company that purchased Ives, re-released THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS in 1894, touting it as America’s First Board Game, which it was thought to be for nearly a century until the Lockwood games were discovered.
Some of Ives’ games were invented by a woman, Anne Abbot, who was responsible for the first truly American card game, DR. BUSBY, a game like the European game of HAPPY FAMILIES, and the first American sports game, GAME OF THE RACES, a horse-racing game. She is thought to be also the inventor of the 1845 game, CHARACTERISTICS, subtitled “A Game by a Lady.”
The granddaddy of American games was John McLoughlin of New York. John Sr. ran a book publishing business from 1828, and his son, John Jr., took over the company and added card games to the line in the 1850s. At this time, games were hand-colored. McLoughlin started perhaps the first “assembly line” for games, in which each colorist was responsible for only one color, and as the game cards were passed down the line, each artist added a new color to the card. McLoughlin was one of the pioneers of color lithography in books. In 1855 brother Edmund joined the firm to create McLoughlin Brothers (first listed in the New York City Directory in 1858), a company that went on to produce some of the most beautiful board games of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The large McLoughlin boards are highly prized today by collectors. Then, in 1920, McLoughlin Brothers was bought by Milton Bradley. Though Bradley continued to publish books under the McLoughlin name, the few McLoughlin games kept in the line bore the Milton Bradley mark.
The beginning of mass production: Milton Bradley
Bradley was a lithographer who started his company in Springfield, Mass., in 1860. His innovations in the printing process led to games being mass-produced for the first time, and his skill at marketing and distribution saw to it that his games reached across the U.S. He was very involved in supporting the Kindergarten movement in America, and began to produce a large line of children’s games, along with some family and adult games. Many of his games depicted animals and were based on popular folk stories. He sold also a wide line of school supplies and optical toys, such as the zoetrope, and in 1866 patented the first American croquet game. By 1876, he was producing colorful folded gameboards exactly the same size as the standard today (18 1/2” square). In 1876 he was awarded the Medal of Excellence at the Centennial Exposition—“the first award ever made for ethical teaching of children through play.” *6
Milton Bradley’s first game was THE CHECKERED GAME OF LIFE. He went on to produce small versions of the game designed to fit in the pocket or knapsack of soldiers during the Civil War. These could be considered the first “travel” games.
Milton Bradley the man died in 1911, but the Milton Bradley name continues today under the ownership of Hasbro, the company that bought Bradley in 1984. During its century-and-a-half reign, Milton Bradley introduced many games which have become classics, including: BATTLESHIP, CONCENTRATION, CONNECT FOUR, HANGMAN, THE GAME OF INDIA, THE GAME OF LIFE, MOUSETRAP, OPERATION, PASSWORD, RACKO, SIMON, STRATEGO, TWISTER, and YAHTZEE, a game it acquired when it purchased the E.S. Lowe company in 1973. Bradley also marketed what is probably the first television-based game, HOPALONG CASSIDY, in 1950, starting a TV-licensing trend that would change the game industry.
The company that Parcheesi made: Selchow & Righter
Between 1864 and 1867, E.G. Selchow founded a company in his own name in New York, that sold, among many other things, games and puzzles. Selchow purchased the rights to PARCHEESI, THE GAME OF INDIA from shop owner Albert Swift, and brought the game to the U.S. market some time between 1867 and 1870. In 1874 he obtained a patent and/or trademark for PARCHEESI, making it one of the oldest trademarks for an American game. PARCHEESI was taken from PACHISI, the spelling of which is still used throughout most of the world. In 1880, Elisha Selchow changed the name of the company to Selchow & Righter to reflect his new partnership with John Righter. Until 1927 they sold other company’s games—they were called “jobbers.” This meant that they were not really in competition with the big three—McLoughlin, Bradley, and Parker—but were actually selling those company’s games. Once McLoughlin was gone and Selchow & Righter started to develop it’s own line of products, the company became one of the top game makers in the country. It was a steady producer, but didn’t carry another game classic until it started making the SCRABBLE boards for the Production & Marketing Company in the 1950s. In a surprise move, the last person to hold the Selchow name, Richard Selchow, sold the company to Coleco in 1986, following Selchow & Righter’s phenomenal success in marketing and distributing the immensely popular Canadian game, TRIVIAL PURSUIT. Selchow & Righter, a company with a relatively unremembered name but one of the world’s most popular games, SCRABBLE,
Meanwhile, in Germany: Spear and Ravensburger
Back in Europe, Spear & Sons opened its first game factory near Nuremberg, Germany, in 1879, and by the 1890s was one of the most important companies for games in the world. In 1932, after years of exporting many games to England, the family set up a factory near London for the production of English games. Spear was bought by Mattel in the 1990s. *7 Another German company, Ravensburger, started manufacturing games in 1884, a year after bookseller Otto Maier founded his publishing company; in 1900 the company was re-named for the German town in which it operated, Ravensburg. The company is still in business today and is one of the premiere manufacturers also of jigsaw puzzles in the world.
The third of the Big Three: Parker Brothers
In 1883, a year before Ravensburger began manufacturing games in Europe, George S. Parker sold his first game. With a passion for inventing games, Parker geared his line to adults. In 1888, one of his brothers joined the firm and Parker Brothers was created. The company’s 1894 catalog stated, “Our new factory (in Salem, Mass.) is the only large building in America devoted exclusively to parlor games.” Parker Brothers was to adult games what Milton Bradley was to children’s games. *8
Parker’s family legacy came to an end in 1968 when the company was purchased by General Mills. It was later owned by Kenner Toys and then Tonka, until it was sold to Hasbro in 1991. Classic Parker Brothers games include BOGGLE; FLINCH; MASTERPIECE; MILLE BORNES, a game based on the game of TOURING acquired by Parker; MONOPOLY, the world’s most popular proprietary game; OUIJA, an 1890s fortune-telling device acquired in 1966; PAYDAY; PIT and ROOK, card games from 1904 and 1906 respectively; RISK, one of the first wargames to achieve popular success; SORRY, a PARCHEESI-variant acquired from England; and WATERWORKS.
An American first
In 1885, E.I. Horsman, known in the 20th century for its dolls rather than its games, published a game called HALMA, which in Greek means “to jump.” The game has been ascribed to Greek history, linked to the 1854 Battle of Alma in the Crimean War, and attributed to an English inventor. Actually, none of these is correct—the game was invented by a Harvard professor and inspired by an English game called HOPPITY. Players jump their pieces over their own and opponents’ pieces—without removing any from the board—in a race to the opposite side. It is the forerunner of Chinese Checkers. This is the only 19th century game invented in the United States that is still played in Europe—although not in the U.S.!
Epilog
Games have been a part of most societies for thousands of years, and new ideas are being brought to market constantly. As they have in the past, games will continue to reflect the culture in which they were created and flourished.
NOTES
*1 The earliest known American GAME OF GOOSE was printed in 1851, more than three centuries after the game appeared in Europe. It was nearly an exact mirror-image copy of Laurie’s New & Entertaining Game of Golden Goose, published in Britain in 1848.
*2 DOMINOES: The early sets and most Oriental versions don’t have any blank halves. What do you call the little dots on a domino? The correct term is “pips.”
*3 Some Ping-Pong Facts: Jaques sold the U.S. rights to ping-pong to Parker Brothers in 1901. In 1971, the American Ping-Pong team became the first group of Americans allowed into China after the 1949 Communist takeover; this led to a major thaw in U.S.-China relations. Table tennis, as it was known in most of the rest of the world since “Ping-Pong” was trademarked, became an Olympic event in 1988. The game was also called “gossima,” “whiff-whaff” and “flim flam.”
*4 THE NATIONAL GAME OF THE AMERICAN EAGLE: An unusual political sentiment in the game was, “He who sacrifices his principles by becoming and Office-seeker” or who “gains his notoriety by possessing Party Spirit” moves back, “whoever possesses Disinterestedness can proceed….” Historian Joseph Hall, assistant professor of history at Bates College in Maine, explains that the “spoils system” set up by Andrew Jackson after he was elected president in 1828, brought into office Jackson’s loyal supporters through political appointments; the reformers believed that people interested in supporting the party or in holding public office were interested only in their own advancement and not in the welfare of the people, and those who were “disinterested” in such political pursuits could properly serve their country because they lacked personal ambitions.
*5 THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS:
The introduction reads:
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.
A player who landed on space number fourteen, marked “Passion,” had to return to space number six, “The Water”; the rule read: “Whoever gets in a Passion must be taken to the Water and have a ducking (sic) to cool him.” Landing on Idleness sent the player to Poverty; players on the Road to Folly had to return to Prudence; the Perjurer was put in Pillory (a wooden framework with holes for the head and hands); the Sabbath Breaker was “taken to the Whipping Post and whipt”; any player who reached the Summit of Dissipation (a state of wastefulness) went to Ruin.
*6 Milton Bradley published a portrait of a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln just before the President grew his beard; only a few were sold before Bradley remade the image to show Lincoln’s new adornment, and now Bradley’s beardless Lincoln is a valuable, rare piece of ephemera.
*7 From 1933 on, more and more family members in Germany immigrated to England because of rising anti-Semitism, and in 1938, the Nuremberg factory was “aryanized,” and turned over to a non-Jewish resident. Anti-British games, such as BOMBING ENGLAND, still bore the name of “Spear.” In 1943, Hermann Spear, the former director of the Nuremberg factory, was killed at Auschwitz. The restitution laws gave the company back to the Spear family in 1948, and after extensive rebuilding, the company again was able to establish itself as one of the leaders in game production in Europe.
*8 In 1901, Parker imported PING-PONG from England and cut back on the development of new board games, to focus more on card games. They introduced PIT, one of the earliest trading games, in 1904, and, in 1906, ROOK, invented by George Parker, which became the largest selling card game in the world. Parker Brothers also began manufacturing a line of wood jigsaw puzzles of superb quality; in 1909, the company devoted its entire production facility to the making of jigsaw puzzles, creating quite a craze during the teens and ’20s. The company’s claim to fame, however, is MONOPOLY, a game it bought in 1935 from a man purporting to be its inventor. The game was actually based on The landlord’s game, invented by Elizabeth Magie Phillips in 1904 as part of a game used to teach the principles of economist Henry George. Parker’s FINANCE and FINANCE AND FORTUNE, Bradley’s EASY MONEY, and possibly Transogram’s BIG BUSINESS all derived from THE LANDLORD’S GAME, and, in fact, some shared the same patent number—a second patent number given to Ms. Phillips for the revised 1924 version of her game put out by Parker Brothers in 1939.
*9 PACHISI, one of the most widely played games in the world, is centuries old, though its date of origin is still a matter of speculation. As the GAME OF INDIA, it can be traced to the Korean game of NYOUT from the third century. Milton Bradley and McLoughlin Brothers produced the game in the United States around the turn-of-the-century, as THE GAME OF INDIA, and THE ROYAL GAME OF INDIA, while in 1896 a similar version was being played in England under the name LUDO. PARCHEESI, as it was renamed in the U.S., was acquired in 1867, and is still one of the most popular games today. Many games during the 20th century followed the PARCHEESI formula, such as the 1915 POLLYANNA, which was based on a book series for young girls that began in 1913. POLLYANNA was little more than PARCHEESI themed and illustrated with characters, and it was still popular when it was re-introduced by Parker Brothers in the 1950s.
*10 The Native Americans (American Indians) who occupied North America long before the European settlers arrived played predominantly games of chance—gambling games—and games of physical dexterity. These games were handcrafted folk games using the materials of the land, or hand-woven cloth and baskets.
* Go, an ancient game from China, became the national game of Korea and Japan, and is still played around the world. Mah Jongg, the tile game that became a craze in the U.S. in the early 1920s, has been played in China since the 1870s. Spillikins, also known as Mikado and later, in the U.S. as JACK STRAWS, is a dexterity or “skill & action” game played in the 1880s or earlier with implements shaped like farmer’s tools or spears, and made of bone, ivory or wood. Americans know it today as PICK UP STICKS.
* In 1976, the game of OTHELLO won an award for best new game. However, OTHELLO was nearly exactly the same as the game of REVERSI, played eight decades earlier.
