A MONOPOLY ANNIVERSARY

An early favorite
Monopoly celebrates its 75th birthday this year.  However, another game, called The Landlord's Game, probably helped Monopoly inventor Charles Darrow come up with the idea for his game.
A Quaker woman named Lizzie J. Magie designed The Landlord's Game in 1903.  She was against the idea of wealthy people being able to gain a monopoly* on land.  She hoped her game would help players see that a monoply ownership of the properties on the board helps only one player.  In this way, Lizzie's game was the oppisite of today's Monopoly, in which one player tries to own all the properties on the board.
*A monopoly is when only one person or company comtrols something.

Darrow and the Depression
Like many people during Depression of the early 1930s, Charles Darrow of Germantown, Pa., was looking for work to support his family.  Some experts believe he had played a version of The Landlord's Game starting in 1932.  Darrow started sketching out a game board on a tablecloth.  It included many of the street names of Atlantic City, N.J., a favorite vacation spot for his family.  Darrow colored the different properties and made little houses and hotels out of wood scraps.  He and his wife invited neighbors in to play.  Players, especially winners, began to ask for their own set to keep at home.

A popular game
Soon Darrow was making two sets a day and selling them for $4 each.  He sold some of the sets to a store in Philadelphia to find out whether other people would buy them.  In 1934, when Darrow first asked Parker Brothers if the company would manufacture and sell the game, he was turned down.  Parker Brothers said the game had "52 design errors".  So Darrow sold 5,000 sets to department stores in Philadelphia, where they were a big hit.  In 1935, Parker Brothers began selling Monopoly.  Darrow became a rich man.  Today Monopoly can be played on a video screen or in many different languages.  In fact, a Braille version is available for visually impaired people.