According to history events for today, the game Monopoly was invented on February 7, 1935 although a precursor can be traced back to 1903 when Lizzie Magie applied for a patent on a game called The Landlord’s Game with the object of showing that rents enriched property owners and impoverished tenants. Various changes were made over the years and she re-patented a revised version in 1924. She approached Parkers Brothers in 1910 and 1924 but George Parker declined.

Ruth Hoskins learned of the game and made a new board with Atlantic City street names which Charles Darrow saw and began to distribute the game himself as Monopoly. Darrow took the game to Milton Bradley and was rejected in 1934 and Parker Brothers rejected it later in 1934. By 1935, however, Parker Brother heard about the game’s excellent sales in Philadelphia and there they bought Darrow’s game. Parker Brothers subsequently decided to buy out Magie’s 1924 patent and the copyrights of other commercial variants of the game.

And so the game of Monopoly entered the households in the United States and also available in 111 countries, in 43 languages. And we picked our favorite token piece but some tokens have been retired and replaced in 1950 and now yesterday, the iron from the 1935 game has been replaced by a cat. (If the cat is like Tippy, no other tokens are safe.) The lantern was replaced in 1950 and one of the replacements was the dog.

The End of the Iron