Monopoly History - Invention of Monopoly Criteria: Modern prototype. Entrepreneur. Birth: August 10, 1889 Death: August 29, 1967 Nationality: American Milestones: 1883 George S. Parker publishes and market a game he had invented called BANKING. 1904 The Landlord's Game, patented by Lizzie Magie 1910 published by the Economic Game Company of New York. 1924 Lizzie Magie issued another patent for her enhanced board game, September 24, 1924 1929 Ruth Hoskins and friends changed the game street names to street names.in Atlantic City 1932 "Finance", patented by Dan Layman,by the Economic Game Co.for Knapp Toys and Games 1933 Charles Darrow manufactures 5,000 Monopoly games and sells them at a Philadelphia store. 1935 Charles Darrow issued a patent for Monopoly, December 31, 1935.Assigned to Parker Brothers 1935 Monopoly board game, Marketed on a broad scale by Parker Brothers on November 5.

1938 "Inflation," manufactured by a Texan named Rudy Copeland.. 1948 All Monopoly game boards sold prior to 1949 carry both Magie's and Darrow's patents. 1974 'Anti-Monopoly' marketed by Ralph Anspach 1983 U. S. Supreme Court found for Anspach because Darrow did not actually invent the game Monopoly, board game, The Landlord's Game, Lizzie Magie, Ruth Hoskins, Finance, Dan Layman, Inflation, Anti-Monopoly, Rudy Copeland, Ralph Anspach, invention, history, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of, fascinating facts. The Story: Monopoly was first marketed on a broad scale by Parker Brothers on November 5, 1935..Today, an estimated 500 million players from around the globe have been mesmerized by the MONOPOLYï¿½ game since its creation. It remains a classic, passed down from generation to generation, making it the world's most popular game.

Although Monopoly is frequently said to have been invented by Charles Darrow in 1935, its origins actually go back to when Lizzie Magie, patented 748,626 (US) issued January 5, 1904, a game called "The Landlord's Game" with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people can find it hard to understand why this happens and what might be done about it and she thought that if Georgist ideas (that is, a supporter of political economist Henry George), were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. This original game was enjoyable but although patented it was not taken up by a manufacturer until 1910 when it was published in the US by the Economic Game Company of New York. Apart from commercial distribution, it spread by word of mouth and was played in slightly variant home-made versions over the years by Quakers, Georgists, university students and others who became aware of it.

As it spread, its rules were changed, most notably in dropping the second phase of the game during which a Land tax was introduced to replace the other taxes, and the shortened game became known as "Auction Monopoly". It was often localized; the original fanciful property names being replaced by street names from the cities where the players lived. By the late 1920s it was known as just plain "Monopoly" and was played very much as it is now. One version of the game, commonly played in the Philadelphia area, had Atlantic City street name. In 1929 Ruth Hoskins began playing Monopoly in Indianapolis with her brother James and his friend Robert Frost "Pete" Daggett Jr., who was a friend of Dan Layman. In 1933, Charles B. Darrow played a game on oil cloth on his kitchen table, fell in love with the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune. He played "Monopoly" at home with his family and friends. But others soon heard of the game and ordered sets of their own. Later that year Charles Darrow patented and sold copies of the game as his personal invention.

Darrow went to work, making hand-made copies of Monopoly and selling them for $4.00 apiece. When demand for the game grew beyond his ability to fill orders, he brought the game to Parker Brothers who first rejected it on the basis there were 52 design errors. Undaunted, Darrow continued to produce handmade editions on his own and was highly successful. Parker Brothers caught wind of the success and decided to buy the rights to the game. In 1935, owned by Parker Brothers, the MONOPOLYï¿½ game became America's best selling game. Parker Brothers subsequently decided to pay off Magie, and others who had copyrighted commercial variants of the game, in order to have legitimate, undisputed rights to the game, and promoted Darrow as its sole inventor. After buying up Lizzie Magie's patent for $500 and no royalties, Parker Brothers marketed a few hundred sets of The Landlord's Game and then buried it forever.

Then it turned to a more dangerous flaw in the plans to rescue the firm with Monopoly: "A game surprisingly similar to Darrow's and known as Monopoly was played on homemade boards in the DKE house at Williams College in 1927 et seq. It developed in Reading, Pa., much earlier than that. "Almost exactly this same game as played at Williams was put on the market in Indianapolis early in 1932 through L. S. Ayres & Co. The name was changed to Finance for trademark reasons. Dan Layman's predecessor Finance. That cost more money: $10,000. But none of it went to Layman. A victim of the Great Depression, broke and desperate for money, he had sold his interest in Finance to a small games manufacturer, David W. Knapp, for $200. Once Finance was wrapped up, Parker Brothers turned to another Monopoly-like game called "Inflation," manufactured by a Texan named Rudy Copeland. Early in 1936 Parker Brothers sued Copeland for patent infringement. Copeland countersued, charging that Darrow's and therefore Parker Brothers' patent on Monopoly was invalid.

If the details forming the basis for that charge had become public knowledge, Parker Brothers might never have gone to reap a fortune from Monopoly. But Parker settled the lawsuit immediately by paying Copeland $10,000 to surrender his rights and keep his mouth shut. Decades later, when they attempted to suppress publication of a game called Anti-Monopoly, designed by Ralph Anspach, the trademark suit went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1983, and the court found in favor of Anspach because Darrow did not actually invent the game. There is no accounting for the unrivaled devotion that the MONOPOLYï¿½ game has garnered over the past sixty years. Some say it is the chance to build a fortune, take a risk, make an acquisition. Others insist it is the drama of competition. Edward P. Parker, former president of Parker Brothers suggested that the magic of the game MONOPOLYï¿½ is "clobbering your best friend without doing any damage." TO LEARN MORE Who Invented Monopoly? Who invented Monopoly? By Erik Arneson Question: Who invented Monopoly?

Answer: Here's the answer according to the official Monopoly web site : "It was 1934, the height of the Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the Monopoly game to the executives at Parker Brothers ." But there's more to the story. Darrow's design was strikingly similar to one patented on January 5, 1904, by Lizzie J. Magie, a Quaker woman from Virginia. He game was called The Landlord's Game and was based on the philosophy that the renting of land and real estate produced an unearned increase in land values that profited a few individuals (landlords) rather than the majority of the people (tenants). You can read more about Monopoly's origins in this article written by About.com's Guide to Inventors, Mary Bellis. More about the history of Monopoly is also available on this site. Monopoly -- Invented by Charles Darrow? By Mary Bellis Updated August 28, 2016. When I set out to investigate the history of the world's bestselling board game, I discovered a trail of controversy surrounding Monopoly beginning in 1936.

This was the year Parker Brothers introduced Monopoly® after purchasing the rights from Charles Darrow. The General Mills Fun Group, buyers of Parker Brothers and Monopoly, brought a lawsuit against Dr. Ralph Anspach and his Anti-Monopoly® game in 1974. Then Anspach filed a monopolization lawsuit against the present owners of Monopoly. Dr. Anspach deserves the real credit for unearthing the true history of Monopoly while developing his defense case against the Parker Brothers' infringement suit. The History of Charles Darrow's Monopoly Let’s start with a summary from what is commonly considered the definitive resource on the subject: The Monopoly Book, Strategy and Tactics by Maxine Brady, wife of Hugh Hefner's biographer and chess champion Frank Brady, published by the David McKay Company in 1975. Brady's book describes Charles Darrow as an unemployed salesman and inventor living in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was struggling with odd jobs to support his family in the years following the great stock market crash of 1929.

Darrow remembered his summers in Atlantic City, New Jersey and spent his spare time drawing the streets of Atlantic City on his kitchen tablecloth with pieces of material and bits of paints and wood contributed by local merchants. A game was already forming in his mind as he built little hotels and houses to place on his painted streets. Soon friends and family gathered nightly to sit round Darrow's kitchen table and buy, rent and sell real estate – all part of a game that involved spending vast sums of play money. It quickly became a favorite activity among those with little real cash of their own. The friends wanted copies of the game to play at home. Ever accommodating, Darrow began selling copies of his board game for $4 each. He then offered the game to department stores in Philadelphia. Orders increased to the point where Charles Darrow decided to try to sell the game to a game manufacturer rather than go into full-scale manufacturing. He wrote to Parker Brothers to see if the company would be interested in producing and marketing the game on a national basis. Parker Brothers turned him down, explaining that his game contained "52 fundamental errors." It took too long to play, the rules were too complicated and there was no clear goal for the winner.

Darrow continued to manufacture the game anyway. He hired a friend who was a printer to produce 5,000 copies and he soon had orders to fill from department stores like F. A. O. Schwarz. One customer, a friend of Sally Barton – the daughter of Parker Brothers' founder George Parker – bought a copy of the game. She told Mrs. Barton how much fun Monopoly was and suggested that Mrs. Barton tell her husband about it – Robert B. M. Barton, then president of Parker Brothers. Mr. Barton listened to his wife and bought a copy of the game. Soon he arranged to talk business with Darrow in Parker Brothers' New York sales office, offering to buy the game and give Charles Darrow royalties on all sets sold. Darrow accepted and permitted Parker Brothers to develop a shorter version of the game added as an option to the rules. The royalties from Monopoly made Charles Darrow a millionaire, the first game inventor ever to earn that much money. A few years after Darrow's death in 1970, Atlantic City erected a commemorative plaque in his honor. It stands on the Boardwalk near the corner of Park Place.

Lizzie Magie's Landlord Game Some earlier versions of the game and patents of Monopoly-type games don’t quite click with events as they're described by Maxine Brady. First there was Lizzie J. Magie, a Quaker woman from Virginia. She belonged to a tax movement led by Philadelphia-born Henry George. The movement supported the theory that the renting of land and real estate produced an unearned increase in land values that profited a few individuals – namely landlords – rather than the majority of the people, the tenants. George proposed a single federal tax based on land ownership, believing this would discourage speculation and encourage equal opportunity. Lizzie Magie devised a game which she called the "Landlord’s Game” which she hoped to use as a teaching device for George's ideas. The game spread as a common-folk pastime game among the Quakers and proponents of the single tax. It was usually copied instead of purchased, with new players adding their favorite city street names as they drew or painted their own boards. It was also common for each new maker to alter or write new rules.

As the game spread from community to community, the name changed from the "Landlord's Game" to "Auction Monopoly," then, finally, to just "Monopoly.” The Landlord's Game and Monopoly are very similar except all the properties in Magie's game are rented, not acquired as they are in Monopoly. Instead of names like "Park Place" and "Marvin Gardens," Magie used "Poverty Place," "Easy Street" and "Lord Blueblood's Estate." The objectives of each game are also very different. In Monopoly, the idea is to buy and sell property so profitably that one player becomes the wealthiest and eventually a monopolist. In the Landlord's Game, the object was to illustrate how the landlord had an advantage over other enterprisers under the system of land tenure and to show how the single tax could discourage speculation. Magie received a patent for her board game on January 5, 1904. Dan Layman's "Finance" Dan Layman, a student at Williams College in Reading, Pennsylvania in the late 1920s, enjoyed an early copy of Monopoly when his dorm mates introduced him to the board game.

After leaving college, Layman returned to his home in Indianapolis and decided to market a version of the game. A company called Electronic Laboratories, Inc. produced the game for Layman under the name "Finance." As Layman testified in his deposition in the Anti-Monopoly lawsuit: "I understood from various attorney friends that because Monopoly had been used as the name of this exact game, both in Indianapolis and in Reading and in Williamstown, Massachusetts, that it was, therefore, in public domain. I couldn't protect it in any way. So I changed the name in order to have some protection." Another Wrinkle Another early player of Monopoly was Ruth Hoskins, who played in Indianapolis after learning about the game from Pete Daggett, Jr., a friend of Layman. Hoskins moved to Atlantic City to teach school in 1929. She continued to introduce her new friends there to the board game. Hoskins claims that that she and her friends made a version of the game with the Atlantic City street names, completed in late 1930. Eugene and Ruth Raiford were friends of Hoskins. They introduced the game to Charles E. Todd, a hotel manager in Germantown, Pennsylvania.

Todd knew Charles and Esther Darrow, who were occasional guests at the hotel. Esther Darrow lived next door to Todd before she married Charles Darrow. Todd claims that sometime in 1931: "The first people we taught it to after learning it from the Raifords was Darrow and his wife, Esther. The game was entirely new to them. They had never seen anything like it before and showed a great deal of interest in it. Darrow asked me if I would write up the rules and regulations and I did and checked with Raiford to see if they were right. I gave them to Darrow -- he wanted two or three copies of the rules, which I gave him and gave Raiford and kept some myself." Louis Thun's Monopoly Louis Thun, the dorm mate who taught Dan Layman how to play, also attempted to patent a version of Monopoly. Thun first began playing the game in 1925 and six years later, in 1931, he and his brother Fred decided to patent and sell their version. A patent search revealed Lizzie Magie's 1904 patent and the Thuns' lawyer advised them not to proceed with the patent.

"Patents are for inventors and you didn't invent it,” he said. Louis and Fred Thun then decided to copyright the unique rules that they had written. Among those rules: "Ownership of a series entitles one to collect double rent on all the properties of that series..." "Owning one railroad nets $10 a ride, two $25...until owning all four nets $150 a ride.” “Anyone alighting on Community Chest should draw one of the blue cards, which will inform how much he is privileged to give to charity...” “By paying $50 into the bank, one may leave the jail the first time his turn comes around again.” Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200 To me, at least, it’s clear that Darrow was not the inventor of Monopoly, but the game he patented quickly became a best seller for Parker Brothers. Within a month of signing an agreement with Darrow in 1935, Parker Brothers began producing over 20,000 copies of the game each week – a game that Charles Darrow claimed was his "brainchild." Parker Brothers most likely discovered the existence of other Monopoly games after buying the patent from Darrow.

But by that time, it was evident that the game was going to be a huge success. According to Parker Brothers, their best move was "to secure patents and copyrights." Parker Brothers bought, developed and published the Landlord's Game, Finance, Fortune, and Finance and Fortune. The company claims that Charles Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania was inspired by the Landlord's Game to create a new diversion to entertain himself while he was unemployed. Parker Brothers took the following steps to protect their investment: The company bought Lizzie Magie's game for $500 with no royalties and a promise to manufacture the Landlord's Game under its original title without changing any of the rules. Parker Brothers marketed a few hundred sets of the Landlord's Game then stopped. Lizzie was not interested in profiting from the game but was happy that a major company distributed it. Parker Brothers bought Finance from David W. Knapp for $10,000. Knapp had brought the game from a cash-strapped Dan Layman for $200. The company simplified the game and continued to produce it.

Parker Brothers paid Luis Thun a visit in the spring of 1935 and offered to buy any remaining boards of their Monopoly game for $50 each. Thun says he told them "...it wasn't at all clear to me how Mr. Darrow could be the inventor of a game...we'd played since 1925." Early in 1936, Parker Brothers sued Rudy Copeland for patent infringement on a game Copeland had made and called "Inflation." Copeland countersued, charging that Darrow's and therefore Parker Brothers' patent on Monopoly was invalid. The case settled out of court. Parker Brothers bought the rights to Copeland's Inflation for $10,000. Who really invented Monopoly? | Toronto Star Insight Who really invented Monopoly? The man who took credit for the board game Monopoly did not invent it. As the game’s owners trumpet its 80th anniversary, we examine its origins, which go back to an anti-capitalist suffragette named Lizzie Magie trying to expose an unfair system.

The true history of Monopoly’s beginnings can be traced to March 1903, when Lizzie Magie, a fierce-minded Maryland suffragette with at least one invention to her credit, filed a patent for The Landlord’s Game. (Tara Walton / Toronto Star) | Order this photo A Monopoly party in the Atlantic City home of the Harveys on New Year's Day, 1933. After a version of the game had spread to the northeastern U.S., Ruth Harvey (at right in back row) painted the game on oilcloth, and many elements survive today. (Anspach Archives.) Lizzie Magie of Maryland invented The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly, to illustrate teachings of the progressive economist Henry George. By Jennifer Wells Feature Writer Fri., Feb. 13, 2015 There is nothing to be gained by writing you this letter except, perhaps, to vent my feelings and point out an example of the fact that everything in this world is not what it seems to be. — Eugene Raiford, Jan.

2, 1964, disputing a TV report on Monopoly’s origins On New Year’s Day, 1933, Ruth Harvey gathered a group of Friends at her Atlantic City home to play a board game. That’s “Friends” with a capital “F,” for the little party was made up of members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, and some, including Ruth’s husband, Cyril, taught at the Friends Central School. Article Continued Below The penny-poor, Depression-era gathering was buoyed by the game, which Ruth Harvey had painted on oilcloth, carefully detailing a series of colour-coded properties placed around the perimeter of the “board.” Park Place. Pennsylvania Ave. Ventnor. Harvey painted what she knew from her Atlantic City environs, place names that would later become synonymous with real estate domination and cut-throat family play — that is, Monopoly. So you could see this as a charming story about the history of what may well be the world’s most popular board game, ostensibly celebrating its 80th birthday this month. Or you could phone up Ruth Mavronikolas, Ruth Harvey’s 83-year-old daughter, and get an earful.

“They stole my mother’s board,” Mavronikolas says of her mother’s design, before throwing a punch at a guy named Charles Darrow, who was credited with the game’s invention. “He wrote that story about how he sat down at the kitchen table and dreamed the whole thing up. Like oh sure.” No wonder former New York Times writer Mary Pilon calls the history of Monopoly a “rat’s nest” and no wonder that in researching her just-released Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal behind the World’s Favourite Board Game she found herself falling down a very deep rabbit hole. Pilon’s own investigation commenced in 2009. Then a writer with the Wall Street Journal, she wrote an “A-Hed” — one of those often-quirky and oft-humorous pieces that ran on the Journal’s front page — on Ralph Anspach, an 83-year-old economics professor who had waged a decades-long battle against Parker Brothers. Anspach explained to Pilon that he had set about creating a game of his own in the early 1970s that would be a near “backwards” version of Monopoly. He named it Anti-Monopoly.

“The object of the game was to break the conglomerates apart,” writes Pilon. “Each player was a ‘trustbuster.’ Players earned points both by breaking up monopolies and by doing other good deeds.” The opposite, in other words, of the prevailing game ethos to “Bankrupt all your opponents to win!” Charles Darrow claimed to be the sole inventor of Monopoly in 1935 "for the sole purpose of amusing myself." His account was included in each version of the game. A trademark infringement battle with Parker Brothers ensued. In fighting the case, Anspach turned detective, poking away at the fabulist lore that had become the spun history of the game’s creation. Well whaddya know. Monopoly wasn’t, as Charles Darrow insisted circa 1935, a game that he had created from scratch “for the sole purpose of amusing myself.” That version of events had pretty much stuck: the down-on-his luck, out-of-work Depression-era salesman trope neatly fit with the beloved Horatio Alger stories of the era, so much so that Parker Brothers included Darrow’s account in each game.

Over time, writers, including John McPhee at the New Yorker, reinforced the notion that the light-bulb idea was Darrow’s alone. (“The game he thus invented was brilliantly conceived for it was an uncannily exact reflection of the business milieu at large,” wrote McPhee in 1972, astutely describing the game as “chess at Wall Street level.”) Yet it wasn’t true. The true history of the game’s beginnings can be traced to March 1903, when Lizzie Magie, a fierce-minded Maryland suffragette with at least one invention to her credit, filed a patent for The Landlord’s Game. In Magie’s rendering, properties for rent and purchase were situated along the perimeter of a four-sided game board. Each side was drawn with nine player spaces, as Monopoly is today. In the middle of each side Magie placed a railroad, again prefiguring Monopoly. Of the four corner squares, one was labelled “No trespassing. Go to jail.” Each property quoted a sale price and a rental price.

“When a player stops upon a lot owned by any of the players, he must pay the rent to the owner,” Magie wrote in the initial rules submitted to the patent office. Yet it was not Magie’s intention to champion the accumulation of wealth. On the contrary she wanted to expose the “present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences.” Magie was a follower of Henry George, whose economic theories and espousal of a single-tax system on landholdings drew great acclaim in the late 19th century. George traced the disequilibrium in the aggregation of wealth “to the fact that the land on which and from which all must live is made the exclusive property of some.” Land barons, in other words. His proposed solution was to abolish all forms of tax levied on the little guy (the renters), while drawing an “economic rent” into the public coffers based solely on land values. Magie saw great educational merit in turning children into game-playing landlords, but not for the reasons you’d expect. “They learn that the quickest way to accumulate wealth and gain power is to get all the land they can in the best localities and hold on to it,” she told The Single Tax Review.

“Let the children once see clearly the gross injustice of our present land system and when they grow up, if they are allowed to develop naturally, the evil will soon be remedied.” The game was patented in January 1904, by which point Magie had injected a good deal more verve into the rules of engagement. The Soakum Lighting System and Slambang Trolley were public utilities owned by private parties. “If a player owns both Soakum Lighting System and Slambang Trolley he has a ‘municipal cinch,’ raises the rates, and collects $25 instead of $5 from every other player stopping upon one of these spaces.” The featured properties ranged from the economically distressed (Rubeville went for 25 bucks) to the addresses of the elite. (Wall St. and Broadway were priced at $100.) And then there were the railroads: the ownership of one brought a “fare” of $5 from the opposing players. Two meant $10. Four meant $50.

“If one player has three railroads it is greatly to his advantage to own the 4th as he would then have the monopoly, and it is therefore sometimes advisable, according to the stage of the game, for him to offer even as high as $150 or more for it.” In 1906 the Landlord’s Game was published by the Economic Game Co. of New York. (Again Magie’s initiative is evident, as she was a part-owner of the company.) Charles Darrow was nowhere on the scene. By this time Magie, had moved from Brentwood, Md., to Chicago, where she earned $10 a day as a stenographer, and where, as Pilon notes, she would have witnessed “The incredible amount of money that was being generated by a handful of people who lived like American royalty.” Magie’s straitened circumstances inspired her to place a notice in a newspaper, advertising the services of a “young woman American slave” underemployed and underpaid. “This stunt was a huge moment,” says Pilon. “It was written about for quite some time after.” News reporters came calling. “We are not machines,” Magie told one.

“Girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition.” Magie’s Landlord’s Game, meanwhile, was catching on, with players often creating homemade derivations. Pilon isn’t the first to surmise that it was likely Magie herself who introduced the game to the residents of Arden, Del., a village that defined itself as a single-tax utopia and which drew the likes of author Upton Sinclair to its flock. “The Arden players made their own board games out of wood, cloth, and crayon,” Pilon writes, “taking pride in the fact that they were not playing with commercially manufactured materials.” Monopoly game pieces It was Sinclair and others who spread the game into the northeast. Scott Nearing, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, was one. “The Nearings were also among those who started calling the Landlord’s Game ‘monopoly’ or the ‘monopoly game’ — shorthand for what they felt was the game’s core message,” Pilon writes.

She quotes from a letter penned by Nearing: “Arden was a single tax community — hence anti-Monopoly.” By 1929, the game was brought to the Quaker community in Atlantic City by a teacher who had arrived to take a job at the Friends school. Ruth Hoskins introduced the game to the Harveys — Friends school principal Cyril and his wife, Ruth. The new community of players included Jesse Raiford, a real estate agent who, Pilon tells us, was responsible for affixing prices to the game board. So there was Ruth Harvey, painting her own board on oilcloth, raising her daughters Dorothy and Ruth, pregnant with her son, Cyril. “Everything on the board is either a place where we lived or is a place where the wealthy people lived,” recalls Ruth Mavronikolas. Paul Cope co-owned the Morton Hotel on Virginia Ave. — so there’s one property — and lived on Pennsylvania Ave. — there’s another. The Harveys lived at the Copes’ Pennsylvania Ave. house during at least one off-season. The family moved a lot.

“We could not afford to live in Atlantic City in the summer time when it was, you know, hot s---,” says Mavronikolas. So the family would relocate to places further out of the city like Marven Gardens, which, notably, is properly spelled with an “e.” The city’s black population, including the widow Clara Watson, were all but segregated in the lower-rent north side of the city. Cyril Harvey employed Watson for a time to assist with the children. “The two addresses she had during her lifetime were on Mediterranean and Baltic, so that’s why those two are on the board,” says Mavronikolas. “My mother’s board is what sold the whole thing. The one that my mother made was the one that nailed it.” Jesse Raiford gave the Atlantic City version game to his brother, Eugene, in the fall of 1932. Eugene Raiford in turn brought his friends the Todds, Charles and Olive, into the fold. In The Monopolists, a reproduction of the board shows clearly that in the Todds’ homemade version, Marvin Gardens is incorrectly spelled with an “i.” It is this small error that perhaps best proved Charles Darrow’s great lie.

Todd had given the game to Darrow, who later claimed that the spelling error was his own flub when he conceived of the game. Yet Todd’s handmade version, with its Chance and Community Chest, its Go to Jail and Parking, its Ventnor and Atlantic Aves., modelled the game Monopolists know today. (Tara Walton) On New Year’s Eve, 1963, Eugene Raiford was watching a television program, which aired an item on the creation of Monopoly and its “inventor” Charles Darrow. Raiford, a chemistry teacher at the Quaker Westtown School near Philadelphia, would sometimes take a moment in class to rail against the game’s fabricated history. The television program was too much. He smartly wrote a letter to the station, laying down the facts as to how Darrow came to know the game at all and his own family’s role in its evolution. Darrow was no inventor, Raiford wrote. “He had it handed to him on a silver platter, so to speak, and was smart enough to see the possibilities in it.’ A half-century later, the true story remains unknown to legions of Monopoly enthusiasts.

Mary Pilon says players still assume that the game was an invention of the Great Depression. Monopoly maker Hasbro Inc., which now owns Parker Bros., is currently trumpeting the game’s 80th birthday. “Technically, it’s the 80th anniversary of the selling of the game,” says Pilon. “Those are two very different things.” Her investigation gives credit where it’s due. “There’s no question for me that without Lizzie Magie there would be no Monopoly,” she states. “I refer to her often as a lost inventor.” The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, by Mary Pilon. Published Feb. 17 (Bloomsbury Press). Monopoly Patented: This Month in Business History (Business Reference Services, Library of Congress) This Month in Business History Overview On December 31, 1935, the now ubiquitous winner-take-all board game Monopoly was patented (Patent Number 2,026,082). Since that day, it has been translated into 37 languages and evolved into over 200 licensed and localized editions for 103 countries across the world.

The game of capitalism, competition and business strategy has firmly established itself as a significant piece of popular culture. Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, PA created the game known today during the Great Depression. In 1934, he presented the game to executives at Parker Brothers and was rejected. A year later, after he sold 5,000 homemade copies of the game, Parker Brothers bought the game. 1 Above: Governor Earl Warren of California and four of his six children spend a pleasant evening at home with one of their favorite family games... Library of Congress Reproduction number: LC-USZ62-103135 Some controversy has surrounded the invention of the game, whether it was created by Charles Darrow in 1934 or Elizabeth Phillips, who had patented Landlord's Game in 1904 (Patent Number 748,626; see also Patent Number 1,509,312) as means of educating citizens on Henry George's single tax movement.

2 Parker Brothers bought the Landlord's Game rights from Phillips for $500 with an agreement to manufacture the game for distribution 3 and thus was free to pursue development with the game known today as Charles Darrow's Monopoly. Over 250 million sets of Monopoly® have been sold 4 since its invention and the game has been played by over half a billion people 5 making it possibly the most popular board game in the world. Interesting facts Monopoly was banned in a number of countries throughout the world - the former USSR, China and Cuba - for its overtly capitalist principles. FAQs, tips, history, links to other resources, and trivia Monopoly, Monopoly: Part 1. The History of the Monopoly Board Game and Charles Darrow, by Mary Bellis. ( About.com: Inventors.) A historical look at the development of the game of monopoly, including earlier versions and patents of Monopoly type games, and discussion of some of the controversies surrounding the game, including a link to Bellis' article about Ralph Anspach's 1974 creation of the game Anti-Monopoly . Present at the Creation: Monopoly. by Juan Williams.

From Morning Edition : National Public Radio, November 25, 2002. A succinct history of the game Monopoly, along with images, Monopoly trivia, and links to other NRP reports on Monopoly. This Woman Created Monopoly to Combat Greed A short video by Smithsonian Channel on the origins of Monopoly. "Monopoly, arguably the most-famous board game, was invented by Charles Darrow. But many attribute the original idea to Lizzie Magie, a Quaker and the creator of the Landlord's Game, which bears striking resemblance to its more-popular successor." What's Wrong with Monopoly (the game)? by Benjamin Powell. Mises Daily. A critique of the game based on market economy principals by economist Benjamin Powell, formerly Assistant Professor of Economics at San Jose State University, now Assistant Professor of Economics at Suffolk University. Who Invented Monopoly? Links to articles and photos plus excerpts from "The Monopolization of Monopoly" by Burton H. Wolfe from the April 23, 1976, newspaper issue of The San Francisco Bay Guardian Axelrod, A.

Everything I know about business I learned from Monopoly: Successful Executives Reveal Strategic Lessons from the World's Greatest Board Game. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press. 2002. LC Call Number: HD 30.28 .A97 2002 LC Catalog Record: 2002100437 Anspach, R. Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle: the true story behind Monopoly. Palo Alto, CA: American Printing. 1998. LC Call Number: GV1469 .M65 A67 1998 LC Catalog Record: 98186436 Kennedy Jr., R. Monopoly, the Story Behind the World's Best-Selling Game. Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith. 2004. LC Call Number: GV 1469 .M65 K46 2004 LC Catalog Record: 2004013643 Orbanes, P. The Monopoly Companion: the player's guide: the game from A to Z, winning tips, trivia. Holbrook, MA: Adams Media Corporation. 1999.

LC Call Number: GV 1469 .M65 O73 1999 LC Catalog Record: 99016930 Pilon, Mary. The Monopolists : Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game. New York : Bloomsbury USA, 2015. LC Catalog Record: 2014030864 Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story. / Tostie Productions in association with Rhino Films present ; produced by Kevin Tostado and Craig Bentley ; directed by Kevin Tostado. United States. [New York?] : New Video Group, c2010. LC Catalog Record: 2012600776 The True History of the Monopoly Game How Henry George's Principles Were Corrupted Into the Game Called Monopoly Edward J. Dodson, December, 2011 History is filled with surprising stories of how people and ideas are connected. One such story is that of the origins of the most popular board game in modern history.

It's an American classic: each new generation of Monopoly players learns to love (harmlessly) indulging its cutthroat, ruthless, greedy impulses. Players begin the game as equals. Luck ï¿½ and a bit of strategy ï¿½ eventually enables one player to dominate all others. That player ends up amassing a huge fortune in cash and real estate. Most Monopoly players don't know (or care) that this game was originally the product of a passion for social and economic justice. In the late 1800s, a young woman named Elizabeth Magie was introduced to the writings of Henry George by her father. She eventually became one of many people who took on the task of trying to teach others what she had learned from studying Progress and Poverty and George's other works. Collaborating with friends in her Brentwood, Maryland community, Elizabeth Magie created The Landlord's Game. She applied for a patent, which was granted on January 5th, 1904 (No. 748,626).

She explained that the game was to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences." While still a young, single woman, Elizabeth -- or "Lizzie" as she came to be called -- became a regular visitor to the Single Tax enclave of Arden, Delaware. This was around 1903. Whether on her own or in conjunction with other Single Taxers in Arden, Lizzie continued to work on the design of The Landlord's Game as a way to explain how Henry George's system of political economy would work in real life. Arden landmarks: Stephen's Theater and the Craft Shop. For a close-up look at the game board used in Arden, Click here . The First Commercial Versions of The Landlord's Game In 1906, Elizabeth moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she met, and in 1910 married, Albert Phillips. I have not been able to find any reference to Albert as a follower of Henry George, but evidently he was sympathetic to his wife's efforts.

At some point in 1906 Elizabeth and a number of other followers of Henry George established the Economic Game Company of New York, which published The Landlord's Game. Sometime soon thereafter Elizabeth and Albert moved to Clarendon, Virginia, in the Washington D.C area and eventually patented a new edition of The Landlord's Game in 1924 (No. 1,509,312) under her married name of Elizabeth Magie Phillips. This new edition, published by the Washington, D.C. firm, Adgame Company, appeared in 1932 and included named streets and other changes in the appearance of the board. More importantly, the new edition included a second, alternative, set of rules and a second name for the game, Prosperity. Connections with Academe Around 1900, Scott Nearing was introduced to The Landlord's Game by either Lizzie Magie or other residents of Arden. He was at the time a full-time resident of Arden. Nearing went on to become a member of the economics department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1906, where he used The Landlord's Game in his teaching.

His support of Henry George's proposals to raise pubic revenue exclusively from those who owned land, and his opposition to child labor, caused him to be dismissed from the university in 1915. Burton H. Wolfe, in "The Monopolization of Monopoly" (San Francisco Bay Guardian, 1976), says that "Nearing played The Landlord's Game with his brother, Guy Nearing, who lived in the Henry George single tax community of Arden, Delaware." Then: As the students and single taxers played the game, they began a process ... of altering the rules. The main change was that instead of merely paying rent when landing on a property block, the players could hold an auction to buy it. They also made their own game boards so that they could replace the properties designated by Lizzie Maggie with properties in their own cities and states; this made playing more realistic. As they drew or painted their own boards, usually on linen or oil cloth, they change the title "Landlord's Game" to "Auction Monopoly" and then just "Monopoly". Burton Wolfe also tells us that a young Rexford E. Tugwell was one of the players.

One of Tugwell's own students, Priscilla Robertson -- long-time editor of The Humanist -- provided the following details on the early history of the game: "In those days those who wanted copies of the board for Monopoly took a piece of linen cloth and copied it in crayon. It was considered a point of honor not to sell it to a commercial manufacturer, since it had been worked out by a group of single taxers who were anxious to defeat the capitalist system." (I am obliged to note here the considerable misrepresentation of the objectives pursued by Single Taxers who shared Henry George's principles. Defeating monopoly in all its forms (but, particularly, monopoly of nature), not capitalism, was - and is - the cause embraced then and today.) Other writers note the game was played by students at Princeton University and Haverford College. Changes were made to the board design, gathering the properties into groups, allowing buildings to be added to the locations and increasing the amount of rent charged based on the number of like properties owned. Other writers note the game was played by students at Princeton University and Haverford College.

Changes were made to the board design, gathering the properties into groups, allowing buildings to be added to the locations and increasing the amount of rent charged based on the number of like properties owned. By the late 1920s, the version of the game being played by college students and others had evolved quite a bit from Elizabeth's design. The game was now generally referred to as "Monopoly." A young student at Williams College (Reading, Pennsylvania) produced a commercial version under the name Finance, but the game was essentially Monopoly. Then, a woman named Ruth Hoskins who learned the game in Indianapolis moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey and supposedly created the version that included the Atlantic City street names. Then the plot thickens. The game was introduced by Eugene (Colonel) and Ruth Raiford, friends of Ruth Hoskins, to Charles Todd, who lived in Germantown, Pennsylvania; and, Charles Todd then introduced the game to Charles and Esther Darrow. Eugene Raiford, Charles Todd and Esther Jones Darrow all attended the Quaker Westtown School from 1911 to 1914 or 1915.

The subsequent connection with Atlantic City occurred because of the close association of the Westtown School with the Atlantic City Friends' School. As Todd later recalled: "The first people we taught it to after learning it ... was Darrow and his wife Esther. ...It was entirely new to them.... Darrow asked me if I would write up the rules and regulations and I wrote them up ... and gave them to Darrow." Enter Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers During the last few decades, details of how the game Monopoly came to be owned -- and the profits from sales monopolized -- have come to light because of circumstances that could not be controlled by Parker Brothers. Charles Darrow was the first to capitalize on the evolution and popularity of the game. He secured a copyright for his enhanced edition of the game in 1933. The familiar cardboard board, packaged in a white box, was produced and sold locally in Philadelphia. In 1935, Darrow submitted the game to the U.S. Patent Office and was granted a patent. The game's origins apparently were not appreciated by the Patent Office clerks. Sales of the game mushroomed, and Charles Darrow became wealthy. Parker Brothers became a major company on the profits of Monopoly.

Challenges to Monopoly's Monopoly Much of the credit for the recent interest in The Landlord's Game, Elizabeth Magie Phillips and the connection to Henry George's social and economic philosophy belongs to Ralph Anspach. In 1973, while on the economics faculty of San Francisco State University, Professor Anspach designed a new game, which he called Anti-Monopoly. When Anspach's game began to compete with Monopoly on store shelves, General Mills (successor to Parker Brothers) filed a lawsuit against Proessor Anspach for patent infringement. A decade-long legal battle ensued during which the lower court actually ordered thousands of copies of Anti-Monopoly destroyed. Professor Anspach presented the historical evidence revealing that Charles Darrow essentially taken the game virtually without change in the design or rules from the version produced by Charles Todd. The details of the legal battle to regain ownership rights is provided at the Anti-Monopoly website . Getting back to Elizabeth Magie Phillips References to Elizabeth's endeavors appear in Georgist periodicals.

In a 1926 issue of Land and Freedom, it was announced that "a group of Single Taxers contemplates a new and improved edition of the Landlord's Game." Elizabeth also remained an active Single Taxer, and in 1931 was a delegate to the Henry George Congress held in Baltimore, Maryland during October. Parker Brothers purchased Elizabeth's patent in 1932 for $500, under condition that Parker Brothers would continue to publish The Landlord's Game as well as Monopoly. Burton Wolfe describes a meeting the Parker Brothers President, Robert Barton and Elizabeth: So, Barton met with Lizzie Magie, he testified, and asked her if she would accept changes in her game. According to Barton's recollection, she replied like this: "No.

This is to teach the Henry George theory of single taxation, and I will not have my game changed in any way whatsoever." For John Droeger of San Francisco, the lawyer taking his deposition, Barton explained why in his opinion Lizzie Magie answered that way: "She was a rabid Henry George single tax advocate, a real evangelist; and these people never change." In a January 1936 interview in The Washington Star, Elizabeth was asked "how she felt about getting only $500 for her patent and no royalties ever. She replied that it was all right with her "if she never made a dime so long as the Henry George single tax idea was spread to the people of the country." A third edition of The Landlord's Game was published by Parker Brothers in 1939, but the company did nothing to promote it. In fact, the game was almost immediately recalled from stores and almost every unsold copy destroyed. Today, very few copies survive. Consistent with the agreement with Elizabeth, the game came with two sets of rules. However, only the rules copyrighted by Parker Brothers were actually sold with the game. Purchases were required to contact Elizabeth Magie Phillips to obtain the alternative rules.

Remarkably, Elizabeth's rules were made available by Hasbro on the company's website. An essay written by Elizabeth appeared in the September-October 1940 issue of Land and Freedom, under the title "A Word to the Wise." Even in her declining years, she was urging surviving Single Taxers to action: What is the value of our philosophy if we do not do our utmost to apply it? To simply know a thing is not enough. To merely speak or write of it occasionally among ourselves is not enough. We must do something about it on a large scale if we are to make headway. These are critical times, and drastic action is needed. To make any worthwhile impression on the multitude, we must go in droves into the sacred precincts of the men we are after. We must not only tell them, but show them just how and why and where our claims can be proven in some actual situation.... Elizabeth Magie Phillips died in 1948 in Arlington, Virginia.

Fast-Forward to History Detectives In 2004, a long-time resident of Arden, Delaware contacted the producers of the television program History Detectives asking for help identifying the history of a wooden game board that had been in his family since the early 1900s. Researching the origins of The Landlord's Game brought the History Detectives to Philadelphia to interview Dan Sullivan, then Director of the Philadelphia Henry George School, regarding the connection between the game's design and objectives and the teachings of Henry George. Unfortunately, this episode of History Detectives -- broadcast on 28 June, 2004 -- is not available for viewing at the program's website. The episode has been rebroadcast from time to time. Watch for it. For More Information on The Landlord's Game and Monopoly Thomas Forsyth is one of the most knowledgeable collectors of the original game boards and pieces related to The Landlord's Game. He has compiled a detailed history of the game, which can be examined at The Landlord's Game .

The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins | Life and style | The Guardian Monopoly The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins In 1903, a leftwing feminist called Lizzy Magie patented the board game that we now know as Monopoly – but she never gets the credit. Now a new book aims to put that right Lizzy Magie, inventor of the Landlord’s Game, which we now know as Monopoly, in 1936. Photograph: Anspach Archives Saturday 11 April 2015 03.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 20 September 2016 10.05 EDT Share on Messenger Close One night in late 1932, a Philadelphia businessman named Charles Todd and his wife, Olive, introduced their friends Charles and Esther Darrow to a real-estate board game they had recently learned. As the two couples sat around the board, enthusiastically rolling the dice, buying up properties and moving their tokens around, the Todds were pleased to note that the Darrows liked the game.

In fact, they were so taken with it that Charles Todd made them a set of their own, and began teaching them some of the more advanced rules. The game didn’t have an official name: it wasn’t sold in a box, but passed from friend to friend. But everybody called it ‘the monopoly game’. Together with other friends, they played many times. One day, despite all of his exposure to the game, Darrow – who was unemployed, and desperate for money to support his family – asked Charles Todd for a written copy of the rules. Todd was slightly perplexed, as he had never written them up. Nor did it appear that written rules existed elsewhere. In fact, the rules to the game had been invented in Washington DC in 1903 by a bold, progressive woman named Elizabeth Magie. But her place in the game’s folk history was lost for decades and ceded to the man who had picked it up at his friend’s house: Charles Darrow. Today, Magie’s story can be told in full.

But even though much of the story has been around for 40 years, the Charles Darrow myth persists as an inspirational parable of American innovation – thanks in no small part to Monopoly’s publisher and the man himself. After he sold a version of the game to Parker Brothers and it became a phenomenal success, eventually making him millions, one journalist after another asked him how he had managed to invent Monopoly out of thin air – a seeming sleight of hand that had brought joy into so many households. “It’s a freak,” Darrow told the Germantown Bulletin, a Philadelphia paper. “Entirely unexpected and illogical.” Magie’s original board design for the Landlord’s Game, which she patented in 1903. Photograph: United States Patent and Trademark Office To Elizabeth Magie, known to her friends as Lizzie, the problems of the new century were so vast, the income inequalities so massive and the monopolists so mighty that it seemed impossible that an unknown woman working as a stenographer stood a chance at easing society’s ills with something as trivial as a board game. But she had to try.

Night after night, after her work at her office was done, Lizzie sat in her home, drawing and redrawing, thinking and rethinking. It was the early 1900s, and she wanted her board game to reflect her progressive political views – that was the whole point of it. The descendant of Scottish immigrants, Lizzie had pale skin, a strong jawline and a strong work ethic. She was then unmarried, unusual for a woman of her age at the time. Even more unusual, however, was the fact that she was the head of her household. Completely on her own, she had saved up for and bought her home, along with several acres of property. She lived in Prince George’s county, a Washington DC neighbourhood where the residents on her block included a dairyman, a peddler who identified himself as a “huckster”, a sailor, a carpenter and a musician. Lizzie shared her house with a male actor who paid rent, and a black female servant. She was also intensely political, teaching classes about her political beliefs in the evenings after work. But she wasn’t reaching enough people. She needed a new medium – something more interactive and creative. There was one obvious outlet.

At the turn of the 20th century, board games were becoming increasingly commonplace in middle-class homes. In addition, more and more inventors were discovering that the games were not just a pastime but also a means of communication. And so Lizzie set to work. She began speaking in public about a new concept of hers, which she called the Landlord’s Game . “It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” she wrote in a political magazine. “It might well have been called the ‘Game of Life’, as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seem[s] to have, ie, the accumulation of wealth.” Pinterest The Landlord’s Game. Photograph: Tom Forsyth Lizzie’s game featured play money and deeds and properties that could be bought and sold. Players borrowed money, either from the bank or from each other, and they had to pay taxes. And it featured a path that allowed players to circle the board – in contrast to the linear-path design used by many games at the time.

In one corner were the Poor House and the Public Park, and across the board was the Jail. Another corner contained an image of the globe and an homage to Lizzie’s political hero, the economist Henry George , whose ideas about putting the burden of taxation on wealthy landowners inspired the game: “Labor upon Mother Earth Produces Wages.” Also included on the board were three words that have endured for more than a century after Lizzie scrawled them there: GO TO JAIL. Lizzie drew nine rectangular spaces along the edges of the board between each set of corners. In the centre of each nine-space grouping was a railroad, with spaces for rent or sale on either side. Absolute Necessity rectangles offered goods like bread and shelter, and Franchise spaces offered services such as water and light. As gamers made their way around the board, they performed labour and earned wages. Every time players passed the Mother Earth space, they were “supposed to have performed so much labor upon Mother Earth” that they received $100 in wages. Players who ran out of money were sent to the Poor House.

Players who trespassed on land were sent to Jail, and there the unfortunate individuals had to linger until serving out their time or paying a $50 fine. Serving out their time meant waiting until they threw a double. “The rallying and chaffing of the others when one player finds himself an inmate of the jail, and the expressions of mock sympathy and condolence when one is obliged to betake himself to the poor house, make a large part of the fun and merriment of the game,” Lizzie said. From its inception, the Landlord’s Game aimed to seize on the natural human instinct to compete. And, somewhat surprisingly, Lizzie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents. Her vision was an embrace of dualism and contained a contradiction within itself, a tension trying to be resolved between opposing philosophies. However, and of course unbeknownst to Lizzie at the time, it was the monopolist rules that would later capture the public’s imagination.

After years of tinkering, writing and pondering her new creation, Lizzie entered the US Patent Office on 23 March 1903 to secure her legal claim to the Landlord’s Game. At least two years later, she published a version of the game through the Economic Game Company, a New York–based firm that counted Lizzie as a part-owner. The game became popular with leftwing intellectuals and on college campuses, and that popularity spread throughout the next three decades; it eventually caught on with a community of Quakers in Atlantic City, who customised it with the names of local neighbourhoods, and from there it found its way to Charles Darrow. In total, the game that Darrow brought to Parker Brothers has now sold hundreds of millions copies worldwide, and he received royalties throughout his life. Pinterest Lizzy Magie’s place in the game’s folk history was lost for decades and ceded to the man who had picked it up at his friend’s house – Charles Darrow. Photograph: AP Lizzie was paid by Parker Brothers, too. When the game started to take off in the mid-1930s, the company bought up the rights to other related games to preserve its territory.

For the patent to the Landlord’s Game and two other game ideas, Lizzie reportedly received $500 — and no royalties. At first, Lizzie did not suspect the true motives for the purchase of her game. When a prototype of Parker Brothers’ version of the Landlord’s Game arrived at her home in Arlington, she was delighted. In a letter to Foster Parker, nephew of George and the company’s treasurer, she wrote that there had been “a song in my heart” ever since the game had arrived. “Some day, I hope,” she went on, “you will publish other games of mine, but I don’t think any one of them will be as much trouble to you or as important to me as this one, and I’m sure I wouldn’t make so much fuss over them.” Eventually, though, the truth dawned on her – and she became publicly angry. In January of 1936 she gave interviews to the Washington Post and the Washington Evening Star.

In a picture accompanying the Evening Star piece, she held up game boards from the Landlord’s Game and another game that had the word MONOPOLY written across its center four times in bold black letters; on the table in front of her was the now-familiar “Darrow” board, fresh out of the Parker Brothers box. The image of Lizzie painted by the reporter couldn’t have been clearer. She was angry, hurt and in search of revenge against a company that she felt had stolen her now-best-selling idea. Parker Brothers might have the rights to her 1924-patented Landlord’s Game, but they didn’t tell the story of her game invention dating back to 1904 or that the game had been in the public domain for decades. She had invented the game, and she could prove it. The Evening Star reporter wrote that Lizzie’s game “did not get the popular hold it has today. It took Charles B Darrow, a Philadelphia engineer, who retrieved the game from the oblivion of the Patent Office and dressed it up a bit, to get it going. Last August a large firm manufacturing games took over his improvements.

In November, Mrs Phillips [Magie, who had by now married] sold the company her patent rights. “It went over with a bang. But not for Mrs Phillips … Probably, if one counts the lawyers’, printers’ and Patent Office fees used up in developing it, the game has cost her more than she made from it.” As she told the Washington Post in a story that ran the same day: “There is nothing new under the sun.” It was to little avail. Much to Lizzie’s dismay, the other two games that she invented for Parker Brothers, King’s Men and Bargain Day, received little publicity and faded into board-game obscurity. The newer, Parker Brothers version of the Landlord’s Game appeared to have done so as well. And so did Lizzie Magie. She died in 1948, a widow with no children, whose obituary and headstone made no mention of her game invention. One of her last jobs was at the US Office of Education, where her colleagues knew her only as an elderly typist who talked about inventing games. As Charles Darrow reaped the rewards of the game’s success, Lizzie Magie’s role in the invention of Monopoly remained obscure.

But in 1973, Ralph Anspach, a leftwing academic who was under legal attack from Parker Brothers over his creation of an Anti-Monopoly game , learned her story as he researched his case, seeking to undermine the company’s hold on the intellectual property. The case lasted a decade, but in the end, Anspach prevailed, in the process putting Magie’s vital role in the game’s history beyond dispute – and building up an extraordinary archive of material, which forms the backbone of this account. Pinterest The now-familiar Monopoly board. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images But Hasbro, the company of which Parker Brothers is now a subsidiary, still downplays Magie’s status, responding to a request for comment with a terse statement: “Hasbro credits the official Monopoly game produced and played today to Charles Darrow.” And even in 2015, on Hasbro’s website, a timeline of the game’s history begins in 1935.

Over the years, the carefully worded corporate retellings have been most illuminating in what they don’t mention: Lizzie Magie, the Quakers, the dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of early players, Ralph Anspach and the Anti-Monopoly litigation. Perhaps the care and keeping of secrets, as well as truths, can define us. And so the beloved Darrow legend lives on. It only makes sense. The Darrow myth is a “nice, clean, well-structured example of the Eureka School of American industrial legend,” the New Yorker’s Calvin Trillin wrote in 1978. “If Darrow invented the story rather than the game, he may still deserve to have a plaque on the Boardwalk honoring his ingenuity.” It’s hard not to wonder how many other unearthed histories are still out there –stories belonging to lost Lizzie Magies who quietly chip away at creating pieces of the world, their contributions so seamless that few of us ever stop to think about their origins. Commonly held beliefs don’t always stand up to scrutiny, but perhaps the real question is why we cling to them in the first place, failing to question their veracity and ignoring contradicting realities once they surface.

Above all, the Monopoly case opens the question of who should get credit for an invention, and how. Most people know about the Wright brothers – who filed their patent on the same day as Lizzie Magie – but don’t recall the other aviators who also sought to fly. The adage that success has many fathers, but we remember only one, rings true – to say nothing of success’s mothers. Everyone who has ever played Monopoly , even today, has added to its remarkable endurance and, on some level, made it their own. Games aren’t just relics of their makers – their history is also told through their players. And like Lizzie’s original innovative board, circular and never-ending, the balance between winners and losers is constantly in flux. • This is an edited extract from The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game by Mary Pilon (Bloomsbury, £20). Buy it for £16 at bookshop.theguardian.com Who really invented Monopoly? | Gifts & Dec Who really invented Monopoly? Playthings Staff , July 1, 2010 ROCHESTER, N.Y.

- A rare and unique early version of Monopoly, used as evidence in a controversial, 10-year legal copyright battle over the iconic American game's true inventor, has been acquired by Strong National Museum of Play - home of the National Toy Hall of Fame. The museum has announced that second oldest known version of the world's most popular board game ever has been added to its world-renowned collections of play-related objects: a folk-art Monopoly game created by a member of the Heap family between 1910 and 1917 when the family lived in Altoona, Penn. The Heap board game also has the distinction of being the oldest Monopoly game with all its playing pieces intact including hand-made money, property cards in color groupings, and houses and other "improvement" buildings. The Heap game was an important piece of evidence in a Monopoly copyright dispute that began in 1974 and spanned a decade. To briefly summarize the copyright disagreement: Pennsylvanian Charles Darrow claimed to have invented the game of Monopoly and in 1935 sold the rights to Parker Brothers.

In 1973, Ralph Anspach, a professor of economics, invented a game called Anti-Monopoly; and, in 1974, became embroiled in a lawsuit for trademark infringement brought against him by the General Mills Fun Group. While Anspach never drew a "Go to Jail!" card in his legal battle over the Monopoly copyright, his case dragged on for 10 years, eventually landing in the Supreme Court. In his own defense, Anspach uncovered a number of earlier versions of Monopoly-what he referred to as "folk art" games that were introduced long before Charles Darrow's 1930s "invention"; among them, the Heap version, recently purchased by Strong National Museum of Play. The existence of this hand-drawn and colored pre-Monopoly game provided evidence that Darrow, popularly credited as the inventor of Monopoly, was not the actual inventor after all, and helped lead to Anspach's ultimate judicial victory.

"John Heap, grandson of the inventor of the Heap game, also testified at Anspach's trial and remembered playing this game as a child as early as 1913 and calling it ‘monopoly'," said Strong Curator Nic Ricketts. "This important new acquisition helps us to show the history of one of the nation's most popular games ever, and one of the iconic toys that is honored in our own National Toy Hall of Fame." Monopoly began life as The Landlord's Game in 1904. Elizabeth Magie devised the game to point out the social pitfalls of unequal wealth among people. But instead, players greedily collected huge piles of money and property, delighting in opponents' financial troubles. Circulated informally at first, the game only gained popularity when Pennsylvanian Charles Darrow produced the first commercial version in 1934. By that time, several changes had worked their way into Magie's educational tool. Players could raise rents by "building" houses and hotels, and creating a "monopoly" of properties allowed incredibly steep rents. Darrow produced 5,000 copies of Monopoly at his own expense and sold them through a Philadelphia department store.

Hearing of his success, Parker Brothers bought the rights in 1935 and sales soared. At the height of the Great Depression, Monopoly was the best selling game in the country. Since then, Monopoly has appeared in 40 countries and 25 foreign languages. The original game used property names familiar to residents of Atlantic City, N.J. But after 1994, Parker Brothers began producing versions representing major cities throughout the country. Strong National Museum of Play owns approximately 65 additional Monopoly sets and related games; among them a rare, early version by Charles Darrow, hand-colored on oilcloth rollup board-one of only two such existing versions of the game (and the one in best condition). Strong is contemplating a special display of both the Heap and the early Darrow Monopoly games during the museum's National Toy Hall of Fame induction on Nov. 4, 2010. Strong National Museum of Play is the only museum in the world devoted to the study of play and is home to the world's most comprehensive collection of play-related objects including games, toys, dolls, and electronic games. We cover the latest news and information for the toy industry.

Question: Who invernted the game of Monopoly?
Answer: Charles Darrow