…is a disturbingly deep element of the USA’s cultural heritage: The early history of Parker Brothers, one of the many toy-and-game companies now consolidated under Hasbro.

The sixteen-year-old George Parker, it seems, had grown up in Salem, MA being bored by something called The Mansion of Happiness, an early board game invented by one Anne Abbott and designed “to teach moral principles.” (Here’s a small picture of the game board.) Young Parker knew there’d be a market for games kids would actually want to play. He also knew many New England parents didn’t allow their kids to play with regular playing-card decks, because of their association with the vice of gambling. That gave him an opportunity to create his own card game, Banking, in 1883. It had a pseudo-financial payoff, but wasn’t played for real money (at least not in the official rules) and offered parents a pseudo-educational, pro-capitalistic element. And, as an original creation, George and his brother Charles could copyright and trademark it, turning them into intellectual-property tycoons.

Fifty years later, in a recently-disputed sequence of events, the Parkers’ firm added Monopoly to its lineup and secured a place in pop-cult history.