This is just too confusing so on this website the word Billiards will not be used when describing American games - games played on tables with pockets will be 'Pool'; games played on pocketless tables will be called Carambole or Carom Billiards. In Europe and some other parts, Billiards or Billard simply refers to Carambole, the primary game that is played there.
Again, the term Carambole will be used for this family of games so as to be clear. The Billiards Family. Origins - Ground Billiards The origin of the Billiards family of games is partially shrouded in mystery but it is many centuries old and almost certainly derived from an out-door game of played during the 14th century in Northern Europe.
Port and King Billiards At some point in the s, people began to play a version of Ground Billiards indoors on a table in addition to the existing ground sport. Billiard Equipment Development The development of the various forms of billiards and it's changing rules over time owes much to improvements in the equipment used. There were hundreds of new innovations and changes over the next 2 or 3 centuries but here are a few of the more significant inventions: By the early 's, people in mainland Europe sometimes used the handle or 'queue' - 'tail' in French; later 'cue' of the mace to strike the ball instead of the larger mace head.
This was more convenient especially when the ball to be struck was near the edge of the table and this method gradually took over. It wasn't so much that an implement called the cue replaced the mace - more that the pointy end of the mace gradually became thinner and more popular while the thick end of the mace became less used.
Both the mace and the cue ends of the stick slowly changed in shape during this period. England was resistent to the change for some reason - the cue was available in billiard rooms by , but did not gain real popularity until around By , it was used by most player and come , following the invention of the leather cue tip, the mace was virtually dead.
Balls were originally wooden but by the end of the s, most people were playing with ivory spheres. Ivory was never a perfect solution, though - the balls were inconsistently dense and the nerve in the elephant's tusk left a small hole in each ball. Room for improvement existed but it wasn't until that composition balls were invented by John Wesley Hyatt from New York.
Initially, these composition balls, too, were far from ideal in various respects, one of which being that they would explode if struck too hard! Early billiard tables were uncovered wood.
Cloth covering for tables appeared from around and the quality gradually improved over the ensuing centuries. Many texts say that Francois Mingaud, a French prisoner, invented the leather tip in In fact there is evidence that it existed before this time, albeit probably in imperfect form but it seems that Mingaud did perfect the new innovation and it's difficult to overstate how much this tiny change revolutionised the game.
By allowing significant control of the cue ball through spin, the options for each shot and the potential for increasing levels of skill were radically increased. John Thurston began experimenting with slate as the table bed in and by slate had generally succeeded wood as the table body of choice.
John Thurston also successfully introduced rubber cushions, the first sale being to the officer's mess of the 42nd Royal Hussars in Corfu on 16th May Prior to that, cushions were stuffed with flax, cotton or other padded materials and the result was fairly deadening. The trouble with rubber was that the cushions stopped being bouncy when cold. On 15th October , Queen Victoria received from Thurston at Windsor Castle the first table that included special cushion-warming hot water pans to overcome this problem.
On 6th September , Thurston's obtained a patent to apply the vulcanising process, recently invented by the American Charles Goodyear, to the rubber cushions of billiard tables. This alleviated the coldness problem somewhat and the first set of vulcanised rubber cushions was fitted to Queen Victoria's table at Windsor Castle on 15th October The formula wasn't too successful to begin with but gradually improved to the form we know today.
The 4 sub-families of Billiards The story of billiards in all it's varieties and with a complete lack of any accepted standards was far from clear up to this point but around now it started to separate into several paths which the author invites you to trace via 4 separate pages.
Carambole or Carom Billiards Meanwhile, the French had also been creative - the game of Carambole or Carambolage had been invented by and not long afterwards the French started making tables without any pockets at all which was the start of the the second main branch of the Billiards family tree.
History of Snooker and Pool. Pool Pool, more formally known as pocket billiards, is the umbrella term for a number of cue sports and games played on a six-pocket pool table, including eight-ball, nine-ball and straight pool.
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You might be interested in. Knight Fight: a brief history of armour Knight Fight. As for the size of billiard tables, a two-to-one ratio of length to width became standard in the 18th century. Before then, there were no fixed table dimensions. By , the billiard table had essentially evolved into its current form. The talent of a professional pool player is truly amazing! Visitors from England showed Americans how the use of spin can make the billiard ball behave differently depending on what type and amount of spin you put on the ball, which explains why it is called "English" in the United States but nowhere else.
The British themselves refer to it as "side. The word "pool" means a collective bet, or ante. Many non-billiard games, such as poker, involve a pool but it was pocket billiards that the name became attached to. Another interesting fact is that the term "pool room" now means a place where pool is played, but in the 19th century a pool room was a betting parlor for horse racing. Pool tables were installed so patrons could pass time between races. The two became connected in the public mind, but the unsavory connotation of "pool room" came from the betting that took place there, not from billiards.
In Britain the dominant billiard game from about until the 's was "English Billiards," played with three balls and six pockets on a large rectangular table. The British billiard tradition is carried on today primarily through the game of "Snooker", which is a complex and colorful game combining offensive and defensive aspects and played on the same equipment as English Billiards but with 22 balls instead of three.
The British appetite for snooker is comparable only by the American passion for baseball; it is possible to see a snooker competition every day in Britain. In the U. This was a direct extension English Billiards. Points were scored by pocketing balls, scratching the cue ball, or by making caroms on two or three balls.
What is a "Carom"? A "carom" is the act of hitting two object balls with the cue ball in one stroke. With many balls, there were many different ways of scoring and it was possible to make up to 13 pints on a single shot. American Four-Ball produced two offspring, both of which surpassed it in popularity by the 's. One of the games used simple caroms played with three balls on a pocketless table was something known as "Straight rail" which was the forerunner of all carom games.
The other popular game was American Fifteen-Ball Pool, the predecessor of modern pocket billiards. Fifteen-Ball Pool was played with 15 object balls, numbered 1 through For sinking a ball, the player received a number of points equal to the value of the ball. The sum of the ball values in a rack is , so the first player who received more than half the total, or 61, was the winner. This game, also called "Pool" was used in the first American championship pool tournament held in and won by Cyrille Dion, a Canadian.
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