A perennial favorite for gift giving, Monopoly has been the go-to board game for families since 1935. But did you know a woman invented the game?
ELIZABETH “LIZZIE” MAGIE was an inventor and author. An ambitious young woman, Magie supported herself as a stenographer and held multiple patents for her inventions. When she received a patent in 1903 for The Landlord’s Game, she was one of the few women to hold multiple patents in the pre-suffragist era.
The Landlord’s Game, the precursor of Monopoly, was created to educate people about the dangers of monopolies. Created during the Gilded Age, where the wealth of millionaires such as Carnegie and Vanderbilt ruled the day, Magie sought to show people that there is more than one way to succeed in life. The goal of the game hasn’t changed: obtain as much money as possible. However, there were two ways to win: you could be a monopolist and gain money through property and rents or through the “prosperity rules: [where] every player benefits when someone acquires wealth.” Wow – that’s a switch! But what happened next is beyond ironic…
Her version of the game was co-opted by the Quakers, who redesigned the board renaming the properties after Atlantic City locations. Then Charles Darrow sold the game to Parker Brothers in 1935, giving the game a wider audience and marketing it as a family game. When Magie learned of the sale, she used her patent to show ownership. She was paid $500, with no royalties, and promised to be acknowledged as the game’s creator. That never happened. Matter of fact, no one knew of her involvement until 1973!
Lizzie Magie died in 1948, still working as a receptionist and uncredited for the game that made Darrow a millionaire.
To learn more:
- Smithsonian Institution: The Woman Inventor Behind “Monopoly”
- history.com: Who Really Invented Monopoly?
Photo credit: Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons