9. Before It Was Monopoly, It Was The Landlord’s Game

If you would have been alive around 1903, you might possibly have played the board game known as The Landlord’s Game. Created by Elizabeth Magie, it was designed to demonstrate the “ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as remedy for them.” Ms. Magie, a newspaper publisher and abolitionist, applied for, and was granted a patent on her board game on January 5, 1904. In 1906, she moved from Brentwood, Maryland to Chicago, where she formed the Economic Game Company, publishing her original edition of the game, as well as other games like the humorous card game Mock Trial.

The Landlord’s Game was wildly popular and was being played at some colleges, where students were making their own copies. In an attempt to keep control, since her original patent expired in 1921, a revised version of the game was patented in 1924. In 1932 her second edition was published, and in 1936, Parker Brothers began publishing her games. The Parker Brothers version of The Landlord’s Game is extremely hard to find today. Ms. Magie’s patents were discovered several decades later by an economic professor who was doing research for a trial, and in 1973 when he began a lengthy legal battle against Parker Brothers over his Anti-Monopoly game, he came across the Elizabeth Magie original patents. Her patents are part of the court records, and now recognized as being the precursor to Monopoly.

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