Lizzie Magie, Born 1866
Inventor of the Monopoly Board Game
Elizabeth J. Phillips (née Magie; May 9, 1866 – March 2, 1948) was an American game designer, writer, feminist, and Georgist. She invented The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly, to illustrate teachings of the progressive era economist Henry George. She was born in Macomb, Illinois, in 1866 to James K. Magie, a newspaper publisher and an abolitionist who accompanied Abraham Lincoln as he traveled around Illinois in the late 1850s. After moving to the D.C. and Maryland area in the early 1880s, she worked as a stenographer and typist. She was also a short story and 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. The Landlord's Game was designed to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for it. The game would go on to become the Monopoly board game.
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