History of the board game Monopoly 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
History of the board game Monopoly Brothers worldwide rights and releasing Darrow from legal costs that would be incurred in defending the origin of the game. In December 1935, Parker Brothers sent a copy of the game to Victor Watson, Sr. of Waddington Games. Watson and his son Norman tried the game over a weekend, and liked it so much that Waddington took the (then extraordinary) step of making a transatlantic "trunk call" to Parker Brothers, the first such call made or received by either company. This impressed Parker Brothers sufficiently that Waddington was granted licensing rights for Europe and the then-British Commonwealth, excluding Canada. Waddingtons