On this day in 1905, punchboards were patented by Charles Brewer & C G Scannell, in Chicago, Illinois. Punchboards are the descendants of handmade lottery game boards, used in the US as early as the eighteenth century. Lotteries were popular but they required a large number of ticket-buyers to be successful. Brewer constructed a game board out of wood, about eight inches square, then drilled a number of holes in the board, filling each with a slip of rolled paper. He then charged patrons a fixed sum of money for a chance at several prizes or sums of cash. The patron would use a nail to push one of the slips of paper out of its hole. Each slip of paper had a number printed on it, and if the customer's number corresponded to a number listed as a winner, the customer won that prize. Like most aspects of gambling, punchboards attracted their share of mob figures and shady characters over the years.
1939 version pictured
