You may love different card games widely played today. Solitaire might come to mind. But what do you know about its deep-rooted history?
The solitaire game has a rich history behind the tabletop games we know today. The origin of solitaire is fully unknown. It was also called “Patience” games back in Europe.
Some scientists and games assume the game originated from France. These propositions are due to the word “Solitaire,” which is of French origin, meaning “solitary person.” It is used to define single-player games of skills and concentration.
Other scientists located the origin of solitaire in Scandinavia or Germany. The fairy tale has it that a nobleman imprisoned awaiting execution during the French revolution passed the time playing this card game. From the deck of cards he had in his hands, the game’s popularity grew and spread among fellow prisoners.
The rich people started playing the game to pass the time and relax their minds. There is a written proof for patience games for many who doubt whether solitaire existed before the new card games played today. There is a book written and published in 1788 in Germany.
“The new Royal I’ Hombre” is a book that features a collection of rules for playing different games. The name refers to a famous Spanish card, and it strongly influenced the advent of card games and their deep-rooted history. Since then, its popularity grew in Europe, and a chapter titled Patience gave more details about a single-player card game.
According to the history of solitaire, the terms patience and solitary are used to define this game’s course fittingly. You will not need competing players to enjoy this game, but you will need patience. Mental exercise is the key challenge associated with this card game as you have to compete with yourself.
The Rise and Success of Solitaire
There is not much that has been said about the known solitaire players. Among notable players, it’s alleged Napoleon used to play the card game intensively in Saint Helena while in exile. The author of “War and Peace,” Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, also played solitaire to solve problems.
But by the mid-19th century, solitaire gained popularity in England and France. Books were written and published describing more variations in playing the card game. Lady Adelaide Cadogan published the first edition of the solitaire game rules “Illustrated Games of Patience.”
Miss Mary Whitmore Jones also wrote five complete volumes of solitaire books. With more people becoming more literate and the emergence of more literature, solitaire became the card game we know today. The advent of technology gave solitaire an extraordinary triumph.
Significantly, an influx of different types of entertainment led to solitaire being incorporated into the movie world. For instance, “The Manchurian Candidate,” a popular movie in the 1960s, included card games in its pilot. By the 1980s, solitaire was linked to the advent of the first personal computers.
Computers are fast and accurate, and they made playing cards and following set rules much easier. For example, those playing solitaire on PCs just needed to press a button and watch the card game unfold automatically on their screens. Interestingly, with the arrival and popularity of Microsoft Windows, it became even much easier and quicker to play solitaire.
Microsoft went on to include solitaire in its operating system on billions of computers. Digital versions of solitaire you can play today include Spider, FreeCell, Klondike, and many other patience games. In light of this, don’t think that you are playing this card game on your laptop because its original idea came from Microsoft. The history of solitaire is deep-rooted and quite interesting.