Who really invented Monopoly?

Monopoly was not invented by Charles Darrow, as Parker Brothers long claimed. Its direct ancestor was The Landlord's Game, designed by Elizabeth "Lizzie" Magie and patented in 1904. The game then passed among players for about thirty years, changing as it went, before Darrow patented a version and sold it to Parker Brothers in 1935. [1] [2]

Magie, born in Illinois in 1866, worked as a stenographer and typist in the Washington, DC area. She was drawn to the ideas of the economist Henry George, who argued for a single land value tax, and designed a board game to teach those ideas to friends and colleagues. Her patent, US 748,626, was granted on 5 January 1904. [1] [3]

The square board had properties, railroads, utilities and taxes, plus a corner called Mother Earth where players collected wages. Magie's patent application said the game was meant to show how the prevailing system of land tenure gave landlords an advantage and how a single tax would discourage land speculation. A later version was patented in 1924. The Guardian reports that a version was also published through the Economic Game Company. [2] [1] [4]

Versions circulated on college campuses and in communities in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Residents of Arden, Delaware, including Upton Sinclair and Scott Nearing, played it. Nearing taught it to students at the Wharton School and the University of Toledo, calling it "monopoly." Players changed the boards and property names as the game moved. [2] [4]

According to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the game reached Atlantic City in 1929 through Ruth Hoskins, a teacher at the local Friends School. Her Quaker friends Cyril and Ruth Harvey renamed the properties after Atlantic City streets, and Jesse Raiford helped set the values and group them by color. The Smithsonian's account, quoting Edward Dodson, traces a different chain of people to Darrow, running through Charles Todd and the Raifords, and also credits Hoskins with the Atlantic City names. The sources differ on some names and details of that chain. [2] [1]

Darrow first played the Atlantic City version in 1933, had a friend draw a more polished board, and patented it. He sold the patent to Parker Brothers in 1935 for $7,000 plus royalties. Darrow described the game as his own "brain child." Parker Brothers doubted this but still promoted him as the inventor, and the company's marketing told of a struggling salesman who made the game during the Depression. Neither Darrow nor the company mentioned The Landlord's Game. [2] [1]

The true history became widely known through a legal fight. Ralph Anspach, creator of Anti-Monopoly, was sued by General Mills, which owned Parker Brothers, and won on appeal. In 1982 the Ninth Circuit held that the game had been played under the name "monopoly" before Darrow learned of it, so the trademark was invalid as applied to a board game. Parker Brothers no longer claims Darrow invented it. [2]