Monopoly's Real Inventor Was Paid $500

Elizabeth Magie, known as Lizzie, was born in Illinois in 1866 and worked in Washington as a stenographer and typist. She wrote, acted and campaigned. She was also a follower of Henry George, a 19th-century economist who argued that land values should be taxed because landowners grow rich from rents while tenants stay poor.

She wanted to make that argument through play. In 1903 she applied for a patent on a board game, and in January 1904 she received it. She called it The Landlord’s Game. Players bought property and collected rent, and the game was meant to show how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants.

Two sets of rules

Magie’s game had two sets of rules. Under one, the object was to spread wealth around. Under the other, it was to build a monopoly. What Magie meant as a warning, The Public Domain Review notes, later became Monopoly’s only objective.

A New York company began publishing the game in 1906. Magie patented a revised version in 1924. Meanwhile, people were making their own boards at home, changing the street names and the rules. A version using Atlantic City street names spread among friends, and the game was also played in Quaker circles.

1935: Darrow’s deal

Charles Darrow, a Pennsylvanian, learned the Atlantic City version from friends. He began producing it as Monopoly. The rules matched what his friends played, down to a misspelling of Marven Gardens as “Marvin Gardens,” The Public Domain Review notes.

Parker Brothers turned Darrow’s game down in October 1934. After it sold well over Christmas, the company changed its mind and bought it on March 18, 1935. Darrow kept a royalty agreement. Monopoly became a huge seller, and he became a millionaire.

Parker Brothers then needed to deal with the woman who held a patent on the game’s ancestor. Later in 1935 the company offered Magie a flat $500 for The Landlord’s Game and two other games she had invented. She received no royalties. The aim, The Baltimore Sun reported in 2019, was for the company to own the full legal rights to Monopoly and any spinoffs.

Magie was not happy for long. In 1936 interviews she complained that the millions of people playing Monopoly were not learning about Henry George’s ideas, the point of her game. She died in 1948.

The lawsuit that found her

For decades Parker Brothers credited Darrow as the inventor. Magie’s role came back to light through a fight over another game. In 1974 Parker Brothers and its then owner, General Mills, moved against Ralph Anspach, an economics professor who had made a game called Anti-Monopoly. His research for the case turned up Magie’s patents. The courts ruled in his favor, and in 1983 the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

By 1974 Parker Brothers had sold 80 million Monopoly sets. Hasbro has owned the brand since 1991.

What the record shows

• The deal mattered more than the idea. Magie sold her patent outright for $500; Darrow kept royalties.
• The seller got the credit. For decades the company’s story named Darrow as the inventor.
• Buyers protect what they buy. Parker Brothers bought Magie’s patent to secure a game it already owned.
• The game reversed its own message. A warning about monopoly became a game about winning one.

Other inventors in this archive also earned far less than their ideas. Ronald Wayne sold his 10% of Apple for $800, and Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoin for two pizzas.