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.

Acknowledgements

We thank our colleagues Henrique Leitão and Francisco Romeiras for discussions had about the life and times of Francisco Giraldes Barba. We also thank Maria Inês Alves, from the Academy of Sciences, for her help with documental information.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received financing from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P./MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC): UIDB/00286/2020 and UIDP/00286/2020.