Lottery games are not a new invention. The games are attached to high dollar jackpots and come in instant, scratch-off, tear-off, quick-picks, dailies, weeklies, multi-state, even video versions.

Lottery in History

Lotteries have been in and out of vogue at various times throughout history. Perhaps the first version of a lottery game was the Chinese game of Keno. Keno has been played in China since before the birth of Christ. Keno is based on the same concept as a lottery game-- participants pick numbers in hopes they will win. The numbers are relative to the words of an ancient Chinese poem. Many sources claim that Keno was an important source of revenue for the building of the Great Wall of China.

For the same reasons that Keno was perhaps used to entertain, while serving a political and social role, so was the goal of lottery games in other cultures. Lotteries became ingenious means to voluntary taxation.

Early American settlers imposed lottery games in order to raise funds to build their towns and societal infrastructures. A significant portion of the proceeds were returned to the winner, keeping the participation popular, while enough was earned to subsidize early local government. The armies of the American Revolution and the Civil War were subsidized by lotteries.

Prohibition

As Americans teetered in and out of eras of tolerance and intolerance, use of lotteries became prohibited. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, social sentiment was leading to Prohibition and all forms of gambling and lotteries were banned.

New Hampshire Breaks the Ice

In 1964, after a near seventy year national abstinence from lotteries, New Hampshire instituted a state lottery. Because the citizens of New Hampshire are not taxed by the state, the game was a means to voluntarily tax citizens. Following closely behind New Hampshire, Canada instituted its own national lottery system.

In the twenty years or so following New Hampshire’s lottery, most state governments established their own forms of lottery gaming. The first legal lotteries were an eye opener for many lawmakers who saw the potential for state governments to rake in millions of dollars in revenues.

Lottery Scams

Today, the birth of the internet has brought with it the opportunity for illegal businesses to scam unwary lottery players into losing their money on cleverly designed lottery scams.