Elizabeth Magie

Elizabeth " Lizzie " Magie Phillips ( * 1866 in Canton, Illinois as Elizabeth J. magic, † 1948 in Arlington County, Virginia) who invented the game The Landlord 's Game, which is the basis of today's Monopoly game.

Elizabeth J. magic was a Quaker from Virginia. She was a so-called Georgistin, an advocate of the ideas of the economist Henry George ( 1839-1897 ). To convey its economic policy ideas also ordinary people, they invented a game. On March 23, 1903, she asked the U.S. Patent Office for a patent for their board game The Landlord 's Game. This should show the dangers of monopolistic land ownership and thus caused the impoverishment of the rural population.

She received the patent under the number U.S. Patent 748,626 on January 5, 1904.

However, until 1910 it was produced and distributed by the Economic Game Company of New York for the first time. Previously, through word of mouth, many students and Quäkervereinigungen had drawn the game itself, playing and spread it further. In England, it was published in 1913 by the Newbie Game Company of London under the title Bre'r Fox and Rabbit Bre'r.

On October 27, 1910, she married Albert W. Phillips in Chicago.