Parker Brothers Monopoly History

[Kena Sugrue]

Theboard game Monopoly has its origin in the early 20th century. The earliest known version, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by Elizabeth Magie and first patented in 1904, but existed as early as 1902.[1][2] Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of economic rent and the Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value taxation.[3] A series of board games was developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game already existed much like the modern version of Monopoly that has been sold by Parker Brothers and related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Several people, mostly in the midwestern United States and near the East Coast of the United States, contributed to its design and evolution.

By the 1970s, the false idea that the game had been created by Charles Darrow had become widely believed; it was printed in the game's instructions for many years,[4] in a 1974 book devoted to Monopoly,[5] and was cited in a general book about toys as recently as 2007.[6][7] Even a guide to family games published for Reader's Digest in 2003 gave credit only to Darrow and none to Elizabeth Magie or any other contributors, erroneously stating that Magie's original game was created in the 19th century and not acknowledging any of the game's development between Magie's creation of the game and the eventual publication by Parker Brothers.[8]

Also in the 1970s, Professor Ralph Anspach, who had himself published a board game intended to illustrate the principles of both monopolies and trust busting, fought Parker Brothers and its then parent company, General Mills, over the copyright and trademarks of the Monopoly board game. Through the research of Anspach and others, much of the early history of the game was "rediscovered" and entered into official United States court records. Because of the lengthy court process, including appeals, the legal status of Parker Brothers' copyright and trademarks on the game was not settled until 1985. The game's name remains a registered trademark of Parker Brothers, as do its specific design elements; other elements of the game are still protected under copyright law. At the conclusion of the court case, the game's logo and graphic design elements became part of a larger Monopoly brand, licensed by Parker Brothers' parent companies onto a variety of items through the present day. Despite the "rediscovery" of the board game's early history in the 1970s and 1980s, and several books and journal articles on the subject, Hasbro (which became Parker Brothers' parent company) did not acknowledge any of the game's history prior to Charles Darrow's involvement on its official Monopoly website as recently as June 2012,[9] nor did they acknowledge anyone other than Darrow in materials published or sponsored by them, at least as recently as 2009.[10]

International tournaments, first held in the early 1970s, continue to the present, although no national tournaments or world championships have been held since 2015. Starting in 1985, a new generation of spin-off board games and card games appeared on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In 1989, the first of many video game and computer game editions was published. Since 1994,[11] many official variants of the game, based on locations other than Atlantic City, New Jersey (the official setting for the North American version) or London, have been published by Hasbro or its licensees. In 2008, Hasbro permanently changed the color scheme and some of the gameplay of the standard US Edition of the game to match the UK Edition, although the US standard edition maintains the Atlantic City property names.[12] Hasbro also modified the official logo to give the "Mr. Monopoly" character a 3-D computer-generated look, which has since been adopted by licensees USAopoly (The OP), Winning Moves and Winning Solutions. And Hasbro has also been including the Speed Die, introduced in 2006's Monopoly: The Mega Edition by Winning Moves Games, in versions produced directly by Hasbro (such as the 2009 Championship Edition).[13][14]

Although The Landlord's Game was patented, and some hand-made boards were made, it was not actually manufactured and published until 1906. Magie and two other Georgists established the Economic Game Company of New York, which began publishing her game.[20] Magie submitted an edition published by the Economic Game Company to Parker Brothers around 1910, which George Parker declined to publish.[20] In the UK, it was published in 1913 by the Newbie Game Company under the title Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit.[21][22] Shortly after the game's formal publication, Scott Nearing, a professor in what was then known as the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, began using the game as a teaching tool in his classes. His students made their own boards, and taught the game to others.[23] After Nearing was dismissed from the Wharton School, he began teaching at the University of Toledo. A former student of Nearing, Rexford Guy Tugwell, also taught The Landlord's Game at Wharton, and took it with him to Columbia University.[24] Apart from commercial distribution, it spread by word of mouth and was played in slightly variant homemade versions over the years by Quakers, Georgists, university students (including students at Smith College, Princeton, and MIT), and others who became aware of it.[25][26]

By 1906, Magie had moved back to Illinois, and married Albert W. Phillips in 1910.[32] She moved to the Washington, D.C. area with her husband by 1923, and re-patented a revised version of The Landlord's Game in 1924 (under her married name, Elizabeth Magie Phillips). This version, unlike her first patent drawing, included named streets as part of the patent application (the games published in 1910 based on her first patent did have named streets, but they had not been mentioned in the 1903 application). Magie sought to regain control over the plethora of hand-made games.[33] For her 1924 edition, a couple of streets on the board were named after Chicago streets and locations, notably "The Loop" and "Lake Shore Drive".[34] This revision also included a special "monopoly" rule and card that allowed higher rents to be charged when all three railroads and utilities were owned, and included "chips" to indicate improvements on properties.[35][36] Magie again approached Parker Brothers about her game, and George Parker again declined, calling the game "too political".[32][37] Parker is, however, credited with urging Magie to take out her 1924 patent.[32]

After the Thuns learned the game, they began teaching its rules to their fraternity brothers at Williams College around 1926.[28] Daniel W. Layman, in turn, learned the game from the Thun brothers (who later tried to sell copies of the game commercially, but were advised by an attorney that they could not patent it, as they were not its inventors).[28][38] Layman later returned to his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, and began playing the game with friends there, ultimately producing hand-made versions of the board based on streets of that city.[30] Layman then commercially produced and sold the game, starting in 1932, with a friend in Indianapolis, who owned a company called Electronic Laboratories.[39] This game was sold under the name The Fascinating Game of Finance (later shortened to Finance).[40] Layman soon sold his rights to the game, which was then licensed, produced and marketed by Knapp Electric.[41] The published board featured four railroads (one per side), Chance and Community Chest cards and spaces, and properties grouped by symbol, rather than color.[42][43][44] Also in 1932, one edition of The Landlord's Game was published by the Adgame Company with a new set of rules called Prosperity, also by Magie.[45]

It was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins, a Quaker teaching at Earlham College, learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City.[46] After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names and railroads. A group member Jesse Raiford, Eugene Raiford's brother, set the property values that are still in use today. Ruth taught it to a group of local Quakers.[47] It has been argued that their greatest contribution to the game was to reinstate the original Lizzie Magie rule of "buying properties at their listed price" rather than auctioning them, as the Quakers did not believe in auctions.[48][49] Another source states that the Quakers simply "didn't like the noise of the auctioneering".[28] Among the group taught the game by Hoskins were Eugene Raiford and his wife, who took a copy of the game with Atlantic City street names to Philadelphia.[50] Due to the Raifords' unfamiliarity with streets and properties in Philadelphia,[50] the Atlantic City-themed version was the one taught to Charles Todd, who in turn taught Esther Darrow, wife of Charles Darrow.[51] After learning the game, Darrow then began to distribute the game himself as Monopoly and never spoke to the Todds again.[28] Darrow initially made the sets of the Monopoly game by hand with the help of his first son, William Darrow, and his wife. Their new sets retained Charles Todd's misspelling of "Marvin Gardens" and the renaming of the Shore Fast Line to the Short Line.[51] Charles Darrow drew the designs with a drafting pen on round pieces of oilcloth,[52] and then his son and his wife helped fill in the spaces with colors and make the title deed cards and the Chance cards and Community Chest cards. After the demand for the game increased, Darrow contacted a printing company, Patterson and White, which printed the designs of the property spaces on square carton boards. Darrow's game board designs included elements later made famous in the version eventually produced by Parker Brothers, including black locomotives on the railroad spaces, the car on "Free Parking", the red arrow for "Go", the faucet on "Water Works", the light bulb on "Electric Company", and the question marks on the "Chance" spaces, though many of the actual icons were created by a hired graphic artist.[53][54][55] While Darrow received a copyright on his game in 1933, its specimens have disappeared from the files of the United States Copyright Office, though proof of its registration remains.[56]

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