LizzieвЂ™s game featured play money and deeds and properties that could be bought and sold. вЂњIt might well have been called the вЂGame of LifeвЂ™, as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seem to have, ie, the accumulation of wealth.вЂќ вЂњIt is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,вЂќ she wrote in a political magazine. She began speaking in public about a new concept of hers, which she called the LandlordвЂ™s Game. In addition, more and more inventors were discovering that the games were not just a pastime but also a means of communication. At the turn of the 20th century, board games were becoming increasingly commonplace in middle-class homes. She needed a new medium вЂ“ something more interactive and creative. She was also intensely political, teaching classes about her political beliefs in the evenings after work. Lizzie shared her house with a male actor who paid rent, and a black female servant. She lived in Prince GeorgeвЂ™s county, a Washington DC neighbourhood where the residents on her block included a dairyman, a peddler who identified himself as a вЂњhucksterвЂќ, a sailor, a carpenter and a musician. Completely on her own, she had saved up for and bought her home, along with several acres of property. Even more unusual, however, was the fact that she was the head of her household. She was then unmarried, unusual for a woman of her age at the time. The descendant of Scottish immigrants, Lizzie had pale skin, a strong jawline and a strong work ethic. It was the early 1900s, and she wanted her board game to reflect her progressive political views вЂ“ that was the whole point of it. Night after night, after her work at her office was done, Lizzie sat in her home, drawing and redrawing, thinking and rethinking. To Elizabeth Magie, known to her friends as Lizzie, the problems of the new century were so vast, the income inequalities so massive and the monopolists so mighty that it seemed impossible that an unknown woman working as a stenographer stood a chance at easing societyвЂ™s ills with something as trivial as a board game. Photograph: United States Patent and Trademark Office MagieвЂ™s original board design for the LandlordвЂ™s Game, which she patented in 1903. вЂњItвЂ™s a freak,вЂќ Darrow told the Germantown Bulletin, a Philadelphia paper. After he sold a version of the game to Parker Brothers and it became a phenomenal success, eventually making him millions, one journalist after another asked him how he had managed to invent Monopoly out of thin air вЂ“ a seeming sleight of hand that had brought joy into so many households. But even though much of the story has been around for 40 years, the Charles Darrow myth persists as an inspirational parable of American innovation вЂ“ thanks in no small part to MonopolyвЂ™s publisher and the man himself. Today, MagieвЂ™s story can be told in full. But her place in the gameвЂ™s folk history was lost for decades and ceded to the man who had picked it up at his friendвЂ™s house: Charles Darrow. In fact, the rules to the game had been invented in Washington DC in 1903 by a bold, progressive woman named Elizabeth Magie. Nor did it appear that written rules existed elsewhere. Todd was slightly perplexed, as he had never written them up. One day, despite all of his exposure to the game, Darrow вЂ“ who was unemployed, and desperate for money to support his family вЂ“ asked Charles Todd for a written copy of the rules.

Together with other friends, they played many times. But everybody called it вЂthe monopoly gameвЂ™. The game didnвЂ™t have an official name: it wasnвЂ™t sold in a box, but passed from friend to friend. In fact, they were so taken with it that Charles Todd made them a set of their own, and began teaching them some of the more advanced rules. As the two couples sat around the board, enthusiastically rolling the dice, buying up properties and moving their tokens around, the Todds were pleased to note that the Darrows liked the game.

O ne night in late 1932, a Philadelphia businessman named Charles Todd and his wife, Olive, introduced their friends Charles and Esther Darrow to a real-estate board game they had recently learned.

Monopoly game