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All About History of the board game Monopoly
The history of the board game Monopoly can be traced back to the early 20th century
The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by an American, Elizabeth Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as early as 1902
Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the Georgist concept of a single tax on land value
A series of board games were developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land
By 1933, a board game had been created much like the version of Monopoly sold by Parker Brothers and its related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st
Several people, mostly in the Midwestern United States and near the East Coast, contributed to the game's design and evolution.
By the 1970s, the idea that the game had been created solely by Charles Darrow had become popular folklore; it was printed in the game's instructions for many years, in a 1974 book devoted to Monopoly, and was cited in a general book about toys even as recently as 2007
Even a guide to family games published for Reader's Digest in 2003 only gave credit to Darrow and Elizabeth Magie, erroneously stating that Magie's original game was created in the 1800s, and not acknowledging any of the game's development between Magie's creation of the game, and the eventual publication by Parker Brothers.
Also in the 1970s, Professor Ralph Anspach, who had himself published a board game intended to illustrate the principles of both monopolies and trust busting, fought Parker Brothers and its then parent company, General Mills, over the copyright and trademarks of the Monopoly board game
Through the research of Anspach and others, much of the early history of the game was "rediscovered" and entered into official United States court records
Because of the lengthy court process, including appeals, the legal status of Parker Brothers' copyright and trademarks on the game was not settled until 1985
The game's name remains a registered trademark of Parker Brothers, as do its specific design elements; other elements of the game are still protected under copyright law
At the conclusion of the court case, the game's logo and graphic design elements became part of a larger Monopoly brand, licensed by Parker Brothers' parent companies onto a variety of items through the present day
Despite the "rediscovery" of the board game's early history in the 1970s and 1980s, and several books and journal articles on the subject, Hasbro (Parker Brothers' current parent company) did not acknowledge any of the game's history before Charles Darrow on its official Monopoly website as recently as June 2012
Nor did Hasbro acknowledge anyone other than Darrow in materials published or sponsored by them, at least as recently as 2009.
International tournaments, first held in the early 1970s, continue to the present, although the last national tournaments and world championship were held in 2009
Starting in 1985, a new generation of spin-off board games and card games appeared on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean
In 1989, the first of many video game and computer game editions was published
Since 1994, many official variants of the game, based on locations other than Atlantic City, New Jersey (the official U.S
setting) or London (the official Commonwealth setting, excepting Canada), have been published by Hasbro or its licensees
In 2008, Hasbro permanently changed the color scheme and some of the gameplay of the standard U.S
Edition of the game to match the UK Edition, although the U.S
standard edition maintains the Atlantic City property names
Hasbro also modified the official logo to give the "Mr
Monopoly" character a 3-D computer-generated look, which has since been adopted by licensees USAopoly, Winning Moves and Winning Solutions
And Hasbro has also been including the Speed Die, introduced in 2006's Monopoly: The Mega Edition by Winning Moves Games, in versions produced directly by Hasbro (such as the 2009 Championship Edition).