The Loterias Lisbonenses of Francisco Giraldes Barba

Abstract

The extraction of lotteries has always been a problematic matter. In the early days, when two large wheels were used – one for the tickets, another for the corresponding prices – the whole process could take many days. In Portugal, in 1834, a book was published, written by a member of the Real Academia das Cincias, describing his invention: a method of implementation of a lottery with 22,100 tickets, which needed nothing more than a common deck of 52 playing cards. We try, in the text below, to make clear the ingenuity of the corresponding process.