Invented the game monopoly

Laid out on the board as a circuit which was a novelty at the time , it was populated with streets and landmarks for sale. The key innovation of her game, however, lay in the two sets of rules that she wrote for playing it.

Monopoly's alternative rules were intended to show players how different approaches to property ownership can lead to different social outcomes Credit: Getty Images. The game was soon a hit among Left-wing intellectuals, on college campuses including the Wharton School, Harvard and Columbia, and also among Quaker communities, some of which modified the rules and redrew the board with street names from Atlantic City. Among the players of this Quaker adaptation was an unemployed man called Charles Darrow, who later sold such a modified version to the games company Parker Brothers as his own.

As you set out piles for the Chance and Community Chest cards, establish a third pile for Land-Value Tax, to which every property owner must contribute each time they charge rent to a fellow player. How high should that land tax be? And how should the resulting tax receipts be distributed? Such questions will no doubt lead to fiery debate around the Monopoly board — but then that is exactly what Magie had always hoped for. When the game started to take off in the mids, the company bought up the rights to other related games to preserve its territory.

At first, Lizzie did not suspect the true motives for the purchase of her game. Eventually, though, the truth dawned on her — and she became publicly angry. She was angry, hurt and in search of revenge against a company that she felt had stolen her now-best-selling idea.

She had invented the game, and she could prove it. It took Charles B Darrow, a Philadelphia engineer, who retrieved the game from the oblivion of the Patent Office and dressed it up a bit, to get it going. Last August a large firm manufacturing games took over his improvements.

In November, Mrs Phillips [Magie, who had by now married] sold the company her patent rights. It was to little avail. And so did Lizzie Magie. She died in , a widow with no children, whose obituary and headstone made no mention of her game invention. One of her last jobs was at the US Office of Education, where her colleagues knew her only as an elderly typist who talked about inventing games. And, somewhat surprisingly, Lizzie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.

Her vision was an embrace of dualism and contained a contradiction within itself, a tension trying to be resolved between opposing philosophies. At least two years later, she published a version of the game through the Economic Game Company, a New York—based firm that counted Lizzie as a part-owner.

The game became popular with leftwing intellectuals and on college campuses, and that popularity spread throughout the next three decades; it eventually caught on with a community of Quakers in Atlantic City, who customised it with the names of local neighbourhoods, and from there it found its way to Charles Darrow. In total, the game that Darrow brought to Parker Brothers has now sold hundreds of millions copies worldwide, and he received royalties throughout his life.

Lizzie was paid by Parker Brothers, too. When the game started to take off in the mids, the company bought up the rights to other related games to preserve its territory.

At first, Lizzie did not suspect the true motives for the purchase of her game. Eventually, though, the truth dawned on her — and she became publicly angry. She was angry, hurt and in search of revenge against a company that she felt had stolen her now-best-selling idea.

She had invented the game, and she could prove it. It took Charles B Darrow, a Philadelphia engineer, who retrieved the game from the oblivion of the Patent Office and dressed it up a bit, to get it going. Last August a large firm manufacturing games took over his improvements. In November, Mrs Phillips [Magie, who had by now married] sold the company her patent rights. It was to little avail.

And so did Lizzie Magie. She died in , a widow with no children, whose obituary and headstone made no mention of her game invention. One of her last jobs was at the US Office of Education, where her colleagues knew her only as an elderly typist who talked about inventing games. Perhaps the care and keeping of secrets, as well as truths, can define us.