Veteran game-show host Jack Barry created Concentration along with Dan Enright, Robert Noah and Buddy Piper and others working at Barry & Enright Productions. The creation involved the combination of two concepts: the children’s game of matching cards (also known as “Concentration”) and the use of a rebus puzzle that was revealed as matching cards were removed from the board.
In place of the playing cards, the game board featured a board consisting of 30 “trilons”, or three-sided motorized boxes, with numbers on the first of their three sides; prizes, that were to be matched, on the second; and “puzzle places” on the third.
The gradual matching of card pairs slowly revealed elements of the picture puzzle.
Concentration was NBC’s longest-running game show. In addition to its fourteen-year daytime run with Hugh Downs (a descendant of the legendary 19th-century frontiersman Davy Crockett) and then Bob Clayton, there were also two primetime versions.
There was also a syndicated version which ran from 1973 to 1979 with host Jack Narz.
An Australian version of the show aired on the Nine Network between 1959 and 1967 with Phillip Brady as host. The Australian show was briefly revived in 1970 on the Seven Network with Lionel Williams hosting.
A final Aussie version aired for a year in 1997 with Mike Hammond hosting.
An American remake aired between 1987 and 1991 as Classic Concentration with Alex Trebek hosting.
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There was also a syndicated version which ran from 1973 to 1979 with host Jack Narz.
