Monopoly: The Game That Was Supposed to Fail

The real inventor of Monopoly was paid $500. The man who sold it as his own became a millionaire. In 1904 a typist named Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game, a board game built to show how landlords get rich while everyone else goes broke. Nobody sold it, so for thirty years people copied it by hand on homemade cloth boards, renaming the streets as they went. A friend's copy misspelled Marven Gardens as "Marvin", and an out-of-work salesman copied that board, mistake and all, and sold it as his own invention. Parker Brothers bought it, paid her $500 for her patent, and told the world he made it. It took a professor and a lawsuit forty years later to dig up the truth. The stories behind the everyday things you stopped noticing. Subscribe for the next one. CHAPTERS 0:00 The game in your cupboard 0:45 The girl from Macomb 1:56 The Landlord's Game 3:18 The game nobody owned 4:45 The Quakers of Atlantic City 6:08 The salesman 7:24 Five hundred dollars 9:44 The professor 11:02 So who made it? 11:21 Monopoly today 12:01 Before it got boring #monopoly #history #boardgames