While the origins of the traditional mahjong game were established in early China, determining the exact time period, location, and originator of the game has been lost to posterity. Regardless of whichever dynasty could have possibly sired its birth, Mahjong garnered its popularity as a tabletop game in the 1800s. Like many other ancestral games that have been handed down through the generations, just like chess, the game was brought to the Western world.

In Mahjong's case, it was first introduced beyond the boundaries of China around 1895 when Stewart Culin, an anthropologist from Philadelphia, encountered the game and included a description of it in his book "Chinese Games with Dice and Dominoes". However, it was only in the 1920s that the game spread to America (and later, the rest of the West) when Ezra Fitch of the Abercrombie & Fitch retail chain in New York started importing the game from China to New York.

The game became so popular that an estimated 12,000 copies were sold within a week. This is where Mahjong began to take a strong foothold on American and Western soil.

Traditional mahjong is a game of marked tiles with striking Asian artwork based on the Chinese language and culture. It is a competitive and immersive game in its general and original form in which players remove and pair up tiles in order to win the game. As it was adapted to Western gameplay and culture, some of the original rules were replaced as it gained popularity from the 1920s to the onset of WW2.

The influence of the game was that it brought people together in a community setting which can somewhat be deemed comparable to today's social gaming platforms. Mahjong sessions would usually be found in community events, social gatherings and anywhere where groups of people would engage in activities to keep themselves busy and connected to one another. Mahjong was particularly popular and associated with women and was usually found within Jewish communities.

In those times, Mahjong was one of those tabletop games played when the ladies got together on a scheduled basis.

After WW2, Mahjong continued to evolve and spread in a much more modern fashion and setting. General rules were established for the general game as there were variations that started to appear in a similar way to card games. Mahjong is very much a multiplayer competitive game, but just like cards with players sitting around a table peering through their cards and placing their bets, one could play cards alone in solitaire mode and so with Mahjong. One of the most popular variations of the game is (of course) Mahjong Solitaire.

And just like the Solitaire card game, which has Klondike, FreeCell, Hearts, and other solitaire variants, not all Mahjong Solitaire games have the same rules. One thing in common with all these Mahjong games, however, is the use of tiles. However, in the West, the tiles are somewhat treated like card suites (Spades, Hearts...), though the Chinese markings are very different and have meanings of their own. Regardless, Mahjong was able to evolve as a Western game and is popularly played today in social gatherings worldwide, particularly where seniors are concerned.

Mahjong Solitaire as a game, however, was only solidified in the 1980s when a former athlete and computer science major from Arizona came out with the first computer version of Solitaire Mahjong. The story is quite inspiring as Brodie Lockard was a paraplegic paralyzed from the neck down and single-handedly developed the game using a digital lightstick, which he bit in order to move it like a mouse.

Painstakingly, he wrote the code and created the tiled artwork, which was an incredible feat considering his physical disability. The initial version came out in 1981 and was called "Mah-Jongg" which was created on the PLATO software platform which was a popular computerized instructional system at the time. However, it was in 1986 that computer Mahjong Solitaire became overwhelmingly known when Brodie re-created the game to run on the early Mac computers (the Mac came out around 1984) as it was the only commercial micro at the time with its trademark superior graphics and interface.

The game was called "Shanghai" and the classic solitaire gameplay using Mahjong tiles was developed by Brodie Lockard himself.

This was the beginning of Mahjong Solitaire's rise to fame as myriads of digital game versions were created in the following years. Regardless, Shanghai, published by Activision, had made its mark as it was ported to the other game and PC platforms of the time and sold a whooping estimate of around 10 million copies. The game was a massive success, and other game developers copied the concept while changing the original tile designs. These created a flood of Mahjong and Solitaire Mahjong variant games in the video game market in the years that followed.

A very popular version that came out was "Taipei" Microsoft's answer to Shanghai solitaire. Taipei was included in its entertainment pack with the early versions of Windows during the 90s, specifically Windows 3.0.

Today, online Mahjong games and variants can be found on almost every platform from Desktops, Lap-Tops, Home, and Handheld gaming consoles, Smartphones, and other devices that one could play games on. The number of game variants has become practically uncountable, and the spread of the game has definitely become a worldwide affair. The original Mahjong tile designs have come a long, long way and are even lost within modern-day translations, with huge variations in gameplay, which could even present the games as totally different from Mahjong as historically known.

Regardless, Mahjong has made its mark and influence in the Western world and will no doubt continue to live on into future generations.