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Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips ( née Magie; May 9, 1866 "Elizabeth Magie – Inventor of Monopoly" makeitmacomb.com Retrieved September 10, 2019 – March 2, 1948) was an American game designer, writer, feminist, and georgism. She invented The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly, to illustrate teachings of the Progressive Era economist Henry George.
After moving to the D.C. and Maryland area in the early 1880s, she worked as a stenographer and typist at the Dead Letter Office. She was also a short story writer, poetry writer, comedian, stage actress, feminist, and engineer.
At the age of 26, Magie received a patent for her invention that made the typewriting process easier by allowing paper to go through the rollers more easily. At the time, women were credited with less than one percent of all patents. She also worked as a journalist for a brief time in the early 1900s. In 1910, at age 44, she married Albert Wallace Phillips. They had no children.
Furthermore, she believed that women were as capable as men in inventing, business, and other professional areas. In the 1800s, this belief was considered both novel and radical. When she worked as a stenographer, she was making around $10 a week which was not enough to support herself without the help of a husband.
In order to bring the struggles of women in the United States to the public's attention, she bought an advertisement and tried to auction herself off as a "young woman American slave" looking for a husband to own her. This advertisement was meant to show the position of women and black people in the country, emphasizing the fact that the only people that were truly free were white men. The ad that Magie published became the talk of the town. It spread rapidly through the news and gossip columns around the country. Magie made a name for herself as an outspoken and proud feminist.
In 1906, she moved to Chicago. That year, she and fellow Georgism formed the Economic Game Co. to self-publish her original edition of The Landlord's Game. In 1910, the Parker Brothers published her humorous card game Mock Trial. Then, the Newbie Game Co. in Scotland patented The Landlord's Game as " Bre'r Fox and Bre'r Rabbit;". However, there was no proof that the game was actually protected by the British patent.
She and her husband moved back to the east coast of the U.S. and patented a revised version of the game in 1924. As her original patent had expired in 1921, this is seen as her attempt to reassert control over her game, which was now being played at some colleges where students made their own copies. In 1932, her second edition of The Landlord's Game was published by the Adgame Company of Washington, D.C. This version included both Monopoly and Prosperity.
Magie also developed other games including Bargain Day and King's Men in 1937 and a third version of The Landlord's Game in 1939. In Bargain Day, shoppers compete with each other in a department store; King's Men is an abstract strategy game.
In January 1936, an interview with Magie appeared in a Washington, D.C. newspaper, in which she was critical of Parker Brothers. Magie spoke to reporters about the similarities between Monopoly and The Landlord's Game. The article published spoke to the fact that Magie spent more money making her game than she received in earnings, especially with the lack of credit she received after Monopoly was created. After the interviews, Parker Brothers agreed to publish two more of her games but continued to give Darrow the credit for inventing the game itself.
Darrow was known as the inventor of Monopoly until Ralph Anspach, creator of the Anti-Monopoly game, discovered Magie's patents. Anspach had researched the history of Monopoly in relation to a legal struggle against Parker Brothers regarding his own game, and discovered Darrow's decision to take credit for its invention, despite his having learned about it through friends. Subsequently, Magie's invention of The Landlord's Game has been given more attention and research. Despite the fact that Darrow and Parker Brothers capitalized on and were credited with her idea, she has posthumous award received credit for one of the most popular board games.
She also contributed to the women's movement and black people's rights, through educating others about these concepts, inventing board games at a time when women held less than one percent of US patents, and publishing political material in newspapers to speak out against the oppression of women and black communities in the United States.
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