Charles Brace Darrow (August 10, 1889 - August 28, 1967) was an American best known as the claimed inventor of the Monopoly board game. Seeing his neighbors play a home-made board game in which the object was to buy and sell property, he decided to publish his own version. He marketed his version of the game under the name Monopoly. The game's direct ancestor was The Landlord's Game, created by Elizabeth Magie. The game was used by college professors and their students. Parker Brothers negotiated the rights from Darrow to produce the game in large scale. Darrow sought and received U.S. Patent 2,026,082 on the game in 1935, which Parker Brothers acquired. Within a year, 20,000 sets of the game were being produced every week. Monopoly ended up being the best-selling board game in America that year, and it made Darrow the first millionaire game designer in history. He died in 1967 at the age of 78. No photographer credited, undated.