Monopoly History

The history Monopoly is a storied one. The game was first mass produced by Charles B. Darrow in 1934 and then sold to Parker Brothers in 1935. The rest is history, right??? WRONG!!!!! Let me explain.

In 1903 a woman named Elizabeth Maggie (pronounced "McGee") came up with an idea for a board game she called The Landlords Game. She was a follower of economist Henry George and the game was designed as a learning tool to teach his single tax theory. The game was played on a board made up of 40 spaces arranged ten per side. The four corner squares were Mother Earth collect $100, Goal, Public Park, and Go To Goal. In the center space on each side of the board was a railroad. The rest of the spaces consisted of properties to be purchased and fines that had to be paid. Starting to sound familiar?

The Landlords Game was granted a U. S. patent in 1904 and saw production in 1906. Although sales were less than stellar the game did gain a type of cult following in the northeast. Most games were hand made and the rules were amended as the players saw fit. These players also added a touch of home to the game by changing the names of the properties to local ones.

The 1904 patent expired in 1921 and Ms Maggie (now Phillips) made changes to the game (probably inspired from the changes players had made over the last 20 years) and was granted a new patent in 1924. The new game had two sets of rules: one for the the Landlords Game and one for Prosperity (rules very similar to Monopoly).

Now the game was growing in popularity and began being called auction monopoly or just monopoly. A few individuals even copyrighted their own sets of rules. In 1932 Dan Layman took his version of auction monopoly and sold it to Electronic Laboratories in Indianapolis as the game Finance (his lawyers told him the name monopoly was in the public domain and could not be protected). This was the first version of auction monopoly to be mass produced. Electronic Laboratories soon licensed the game to Knapp Electric. (For more on The Landlords Game and the early history of the folk game monopoly see www.tt.tf)

Ruth Hoskins learned the game from Dan Layman and took it with her when she moved to Atlantic City. She and her friends played the game and changed a few aspects. A few of the spaces were rearranged (an erroneous memory perhaps) and most notably, the property names were changed to Atlantic City street names. Jesse Raiford was in this group of friends and is credited with doing much of the work on the game. This version was known as monopoly.

Raiford knew a man named Charles Todd and taught him the game of monopoly (at this time this version was still an auction type monopoly. There were no fixed prices for the properties, everything was auctioned to the highest bidder). Charles Todd had grown up with Charles Darrow´s future wife, Esther. The Todd´s invited the Darrow´s to their home for a monopoly night. Darrow was smitten. Darrow asked Todd for written copies of the rules. Todd had his secretary type these up and he gave them to Darrow. Charles Darrow never spoke to Charles Todd again.

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