Monopoly: The unknown story behind the popular board game

It has emerged as one of the most popular of all time. But what’s the story of the game? One night in late 1932, a Philadelphia businessman named Charles Todd and his wife, Olive, initiated their friends, Charles and Esther Darrow, into a board game they had recently discovered. As the two couples sat around the dashboard, enthusiastically throwing the dice, buying real estate and moving their pawns, the Todds gladly noticed that the game liked the Darrows. In fact, they were so excited, Charles Todd made them a board of the game and began teaching them some more advanced rules. The game had no official name: it was not sold in a box, but passed from friend to friend. Everyone called it “the monopoly game”. One day, Darrow – who was unemployed and desperate for money – asked Charles Todd, a written copy of the rules. Todd was slightly confused, as he had never written them. Which was quite reasonable, as the rules of the game were invented in Washington in 1903 by a bold, progressive woman named Elizabeth Maggie. Her story however saw after years the light of publicity, and the credit for the game was taken by Charles Darrow, who put it on in 1935. Today Maggie’s story is known, however, who sold the board game to Parker brothers and became a millionaire, is what is considered to have invented Monopoly, although in his encounters he did not give clear answers to how he came up with the idea of creating the popular game. As for Elizabeth, the problems of the new century were so enormous, income inequalities so large and monosellers so powerful, that it seemed impossible for an unknown woman working as a stenographer to have the opportunity to ease the suffering of society with something as insignificant as a board game. But he had to try. Every night she sat at her house, planned and redesigned, thought and thought. It was in the early 1900s and she wanted her board game to reflect her progressive political views – that was all the point. He eventually created a game, through which he hoped to be able to explain Henry George’s simple tax theory. According to this, if people have profits from their property, regardless of its size, eventually the entire property will end up legally in the hands of a single man. Her game, “The Household Game”, was published a few years later. Others interested in board games rebuilt the game and some made their own series. Lizzie alone patented a revised version of the game in 1924, and that’s when they went out on the market and other similar tabletops. In the 1970s, the original story of the game began to disappear (and at least one historian stated that it had deliberately been silenced), and the idea created by Charles Darrow became a tradition. This was reported in 1974 in “The Book of Monopoly: The Monopoly Book: Strategy and Tactics of the World’s Most Popular Game, by Maxine Brandi, and even in the game’s instructions. As Professor Ralph Anspak fought against the Parker Brothers and their then parent company, General Mills, in Monopoly’s trademark, several of Monopoly’s history had been “re-discovered.” Because of long – term judicial proceedings, the legal validity of the Parker brothers ’ trademarks in the game had not been restored until the mid – 1980 ’ s. The name of the game remains a trademark of the Parker brothers, as do the specific design elements. Parker’s current parent company, Hasbro, only recognizes Darrow’s role in creating the game. Professor Anspak published a book on his investigations, entitled “Monopoly: The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle”, in which he analyzes his opinion on the deliberate suppression of the early history of Monopoly. Above all, the Monopoly case raises the question of who should take credit for an invention and how. Most people know brothers. Wright – who filed their patent on the same day as Lizzie Maggie – but do not remember the other airmen who also tried to fly. The saying that “success has many fathers, but we remember only one”, is true – not to mention anything about the mothers of success. With information from The Guardian / Source: