 It is not certain to whom auction bridge should be credited.A letter in "The Times" (London), January 16, 1905, signed by Oswald Crawfurd, describes auction bridge as first played in 1904, while a book by "John Doe" (Francis Reginald Roe), published in Allahabad, India, in 1899, puts forward auction bridge as an invention of three members of the Indian Civil Service stationed at an isolated community, designed a three-handed form of bridge to compensate the lack of a fourth player.Their key contribution was the concept of competitive bidding for the declaration.