TIMELINE OF GAME DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
The timeline below shows the development of American game companies in the 19th century. To read the full timeline of the 19th and 20th centuries, please contact the author to get the password to the complete article. A fee of $4 or 3€, payable through PayPal, is required. Email Bruce Whitehill at: games at the big game hunter dot com (no spaces; use “@” and “.”).
Significant games, the companies that made them, and the cultural times in which they emerged.
1822 New York booksellers, F. & R. Lockwood publish the first known American board games: Travelers’ Tour Through the United States and Travelers’ Tour Through Europe
1843 W. & S.B. Ives, considered the grandfathers of the American games industry, produce The Mansion of Happiness, which was nearly a direct copy of its English namesake originally published around 1800.
1844 Ives publishes The National Game of the American Eagle and The Game of Pope or Pagan, or the Siege of the Stronghold of Satan by the Christian Army . The company prospers into the 1850s
1845 Anne Abbot, America’s first known game inventor, invents Dr. Busby, the nation’s first card game, and Game of the Races, the first truly American sports game, both published by Ives.
Dr. Busby, 1890s, Parker Bros.
1860± Lithographic printing allows for mass production of games, signalling the end of hand-colored games
1889 Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) beats the “around the world in 80 days” record of Jules Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg; McLoughlin’s Round the World with Nellie Bly game is published in 1890.
Round the World with Nelly Bly, McLoughlin Bros.
1894-1895 Du Maurier’s “Trilby” serialized in Harper’s Monthly; E.I Horsman’s game Trilby comes out in 1895.
Trilby, 1894, Horsman; from Du Maurier story
