Cold Open

It’s late 1932 in a townhouse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where a dinner party is underway.

43-year-old Charles Darrow opens a bottle of wine and pours it into the glasses of his dining companions. He and his wife have been invited to dinner with friends, and even though Charles is out of work and money is tight, he’s saved up enough for a decent bottle for them all to share.

Charles raises his glass and joins his friends in a toast to their good health. Then the host of the party brings out the after-dinner entertainment.

They all clear space as he unfolds a square game board and places it in the middle of the table. The host grabs dice and some small carved wooden houses from the box as Charles tilts his head to read the words emblazoned across the middle of the board. It’s called The Landlord’s Game. Charles's never played it before, but his host explains the rules as he deals out play money to everyone around the table.

Charles jokes as he’s given a handful of fake banknotes, saying he’ll keep hold of them for next week’s groceries. And then, the host of the party hands him one of the dice. As a newcomer to the game, Charles can go first. So, Charles shakes the die in his hand… and rolls it across the board. The game has begun.

After playing for the first time, Charles Darrow becomes obsessed with The Landlord’s Game—and not just because he enjoys playing it. Charles sees the board game as an opportunity to make a few bucks while he’s out of work, so he soon develops a copycat version of his own to sell. But when it’s launched, this game won’t just give Charles a bit of extra spending money—it’ll make him a millionaire. The Landlord’s Game was invented as a critique of greed and the excesses of capitalism. But its original inventor will fall victim to those very same forces after Charles Darrow patents the game as his own under the name Monopoly on December 31st, 1935.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is December 31st, 1935: Winning Monopoly.

Act One

It’s early 1903 in Washington, D.C., 19 years before Charles Darrow first plays The Landlord’s Game.

The daylight is fading and 37-year-old Lizzie Magie is squinting in the creeping darkness as she draws a straight line on a piece of waxed paper. Lizzie wants to finish what she’s working on before she turns in for the night. And she uses a ruler to draw three more lines, forming a square. Then, she divides the outside of the square into sections. She’s making a board game.

Lizzie doesn’t have much time to play games herself. She works full-time as a freelance typist and stenographer. But she’s also an amateur inventor, a poet, and, above all, a political activist. Lizzie is a campaigning feminist and a passionate advocate for Georgism, an economic ideology based on the idea that the government should be primarily funded by taxes on land rather than income. That way, the burden of taxation would fall more on the rich landowners than the working class. And it’s these political beliefs that are behind Lizzie’s latest project: a new board game.

Lizzie writes the names of several different properties on the outside of the square board she’s set out and labels each one with a price. The middle of the board serves no real purpose, so Lizzie writes the name of her new creation there instead, calling it The Landlord’s Game.

According to the rules of The Landlord’s Game, players must use the money they start with to buy properties around the board. Then, when another player lands on one of those properties, they can collect rent. The more property a player owns, the more likely they are to earn the most money and win. And any player unfortunate enough to trespass on the square labelled “Lord Blueblood’s estate” must immediately go to the corner marked "jail." Lizzie intends her game to be a practical demonstration of the inherent inequality in America’s economic system—where the rich become richer by doing little more than holding onto land, while the working class are pulled deeper into poverty just by trying to go about their lives.

After countless evenings spent tinkering with the game board and the rules, Lizzie is finally satisfied. She applies for a patent, and on March 23rd, 1903, she’s granted legal recognition that she created and owns the intellectual property in The Landlord’s Game. But Lizzie doesn’t look to profit from her idea. Instead, she produces just a few copies of the game and hands them out to friends and family.

The few they play The Landlord’s Game enjoyed, and they encourage Lizzie to take it further. After enduring their nagging for two years, Lizzie finally gives in and sets up a small company with a few friends to produce the game on a larger scale. They still sell it mainly through word of mouth, but gradually, The Landlord’s Game builds a dedicated following on college campuses, among left-wing intellectuals, and in Quaker communities, who are all sympathetic to the political beliefs behind the game.

Eventually, almost three decades later, The Landlord’s Game finds its way to a dinner party in Philadelphia. But by the time Charles Darrow first picks up the dice, America has been plunged into the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. Charles himself has been out of work for months after losing his job as a salesman. And that means he’s both desperate to make money, and has plenty of time to take on a new project.

So over the next few months, after playing The Landlord’s Game for the first time, Charles creates his own version. He calls it Monopoly and insists it’s his own work. But the similarities to Lizzie Magie’s game are unmistakable. Both have square game boards divided into sections to represent properties, both involve players buying up those property and charging rent to amass money. The only real change Charles makes is to take out Lizzie’s more overt criticisms of capitalism.

And even though he’s stolen the idea, in 1934, Charles offers the rights to Monopoly to board game manufacturer Milton Bradley. They turn him down. Charles is also rejected by game company Parker Brothers who dismiss Monopoly as too complicated, too technical, and too time-consuming to play.

But Charles won’t be put off by the lack of interest from the board game experts. He’s had personal experience of just how engrossing this game can be. So instead of giving up, Charles will decide to risk it all - and publish Monopoly himself.

Act Two

It’s November 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, two weeks after the Parker Brothers games company turned down the chance to buy the rights to Monopoly.

Charles Darrow sits at a typewriter, the keys clacking as he adds a street name to a small piece of card stock. Charles checks the spelling of “Mediterranean Avenue” before pulling the card from the rollers and placing it on the teetering pile beside him.

After Charles failed to convince mainstream board game manufacturers to produce his game, he decided to do it himself. He persuaded the manager of Wanamaker’s department store in downtown Philadelphia to stock Monopoly over Christmas. And then, he borrowed money to buy the materials he needed to manufacture a few dozen copies of the game. Since then, he and his family have hand-colored the game boards, typed up property cards and carved wooden houses and hotel pieces. Now, he’s almost got enough finished games to take to the department store.

Charles doesn’t have much time to rest after he’s delivered them, though. The department store manager soon gets back in touch and requests more stock. Wanamaker’s has already sold out and the manager wants to extend his deal to sell Monopoly after Christmas.

Charles’s gamble seems to be paying off. When sales of his independently produced Monopoly hit 5,000 units, Charles writes again to Parker Brothers. Now that Charles has proof that Monopoly is popular, the board game manufacturer agrees to take it on, and offers Charles a generous deal. In return for the exclusive worldwide rights to Monopoly, Parker Brothers will pay Charles a royalty for every copy sold.

When the Parker Brothers version of Monopoly launches nationwide in 1935, it proves just as popular as Charles’s homemade edition did in Philadelphia. But Parker Brothers soon discovers a problem with the hit game. A few customers write in saying that they’ve been playing an almost identical version for years called The Landlord’s Game. While investigating the claims, Parker Brothers discovers that The Landlord’s Game is indeed almost identical to Monopoly—and it was patented over 30 years ago.

Charles Darrow swears an affidavit that Monopoly is all his own work. And according to him, he invented the game in his basement, and any similarities to the earlier game are purely coincidental. But Parker Brothers isn’t so sure. And before the company commits to expanding production of Monopoly any further, they determine to protect their investment from any legal attacks.

*

It's December 31st, 1935, at the US Patent Office in Arlington, Virginia, a few months after Monopoly’s national launch.

A clerk glances at the clock before picking up the last document on his desk. It’s New Year’s Eve, and he wants to go home to celebrate. But he has just one more application to look over first.

Four months ago, Parker Brothers founder George Parker discovered that his newest board game might not be the simple success story it first appeared. It emerged that the intellectual property to Monopoly didn’t belong solely to Charles Darrow as he had claimed—it was a clear imitation of The Landlord’s Game created by Lizzie Magie decades earlier. That left Parker Brothers in danger of being sued, and to guard against this, George approached Lizzie with an offer: he would buy the rights to her game for a flat fee of $500 and the promise to credit Lizzie in every game of Monopoly that Parker Brothers produced. Lizzie agreed. And with that legal protection secure, George told Charles Darrow to apply for his own patent for Monopoly. But the process has been a slow, and Charles’s application has only just come up for review at the patent office.

The clerk checks that the required paperwork has been filled out, and that the required fee has been paid and there are no conflicting claims recorded. And then, the clerk stamps the application. The patent is granted.

George Parker immediately orders production of Monopoly ramped up. But he doesn’t keep his promise to Lizzie. Her name is omitted from the box and documentation accompanying the game. She is furious that George has gone back on their agreement but soon realizes that George has drawn up their contract in such a way that there is no legal avenue by which she can stop him.

It doesn’t prevent her from going to the press, though. Lizzie contacts several newspapers with her complaints. And a few write up the story, but it makes little difference. Americans have fallen in love with Monopoly. They seem to have little interest in who really invented it.

Lizzie Magie will die 14 years later in 1948. And by then, her role in creating one of the world’s best-known games will have been erased from the history books. By contrast, Charles Darrow will be praised as a pioneer of modern board games, and his deal with Parker Brothers will have made him a millionaire. But Lizzie Magie’s contribution to the development of Monopoly won’t be forgotten forever—a quarter of a century later, her work will be rediscovered by a man close to her political heart.

Act Three

It’s 1973 at the archives of the US Patent Office in Arlington, Virginia, 37 years after Monopoly was released by Parker Brothers.

47-year-old Professor Ralph Anspach flicks through a box of papers, looking for a particular patent application made all the way back in 1903. He stops when an illustration catches his eye. It’s a board game that looks just like Monopoly. Ralph grins because this is what he’s been looking for.

Ralph hates Monopoly. As an economics professor, he thinks the game gives players the misleading idea that monopolies are a desirable outcome. So, a few months ago, Ralph began producing a board game of his own that he calls Anti-Monopoly. Rather than buy as much property as possible, players are tasked with breaking up overly-dominant corporations with the goal of creating a truly free market. But when Monopoly manufacturer Parker Brothers got wind of Ralph’s game, they sued him for trademark infringement. Now, Ralph’s here in the patent office archives, hoping to find a legal defense to prevent Parker Brothers from bankrupting him in court.

As Ralph examines the patent for The Landlord’s Game, he realizes it’s almost identical to Monopoly. And the more he digs into The Landlord’s Game, the more he discovers about its inventor Lizzie Magie. It’s soon obvious to Ralph that Lizzie was the real brains behind Monopoly, not Charles Darrow as Parker Brothers claims.

So over the next six years, a legal case progresses slowly through the courts. Parker Brothers claims it’s an open-and-shut case—Ralph infringed on the Monopoly trademark. But Ralph’s defense is more ambitious. He points out that Monopoly itself was based on an older game created by Lizzie Magie in 1903. And since more than 70 years have passed since Lizzie first recorded her idea, The Landlord’s Game is now in the public domain. Parker Brothers can’t sue him for using it.

Eventually, Ralph Anspach and Parker Brothers reach an agreement, and Ralph will be allowed to keep using the name Anti-Monopoly. But the legal case will have another unintended effect. It’ll resurrect the memory of Lizzie Magie, and her part in creating the most iconic board game of all time will no longer languish in the shadows, despite Charles Darrow taking all the credit and becoming a millionaire on the back of the patent he was awarded on December 31st, 1935.

Outro

Next on History Daily. January 1st, 1892. A 17-year-old girl becomes the first immigrant to enter the United States of America through Ellis Island.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves.

Edited by Dorian Merina.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.