Edok Ang Dakilang Abnoy Sa Lansangan
History of Table Tennis
Ping Pong Anyone?
The sport got its start in England towards the end of the 19th century when, after dinner, some upper-middle class Victorians decided to turn their dining room tables into miniature versions of the traditional lawn tennis playing field. Several different every-day objects were employed in constructing the sport. They used a line of books as the net. Rackets were lids from empty cigar boxes, and a little later, parchment paper stretched around a frame. The ball would be either a ball of string, or perhaps more commonly, a champagne cork or rubber ball.
Before “Table Tennis.”
When the game first started it was called by a number of different names. “Whif whaf,” “gossamer,” and “flim flam” were commonly used to describe it. The words, as can be assumed, were derived from the sound that the ball made when hit back and forth on the table. In 1901 though, English manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd registered one of the more popular names, Ping-Pong, as a copyright. He later sold the trademark to the Parker Brothers in the United States. Then in the 1920's the name and the sport were revived in Europe as table tennis.
Evolution
The turn of the century brought many other refinements to the sport. Players started using celluloid balls after the English man James Gibb discovered them during a trip to the United States in 1901 and proved them to be perfect for Ping-Pong. In 1903, E.C Goode replaced parchment paper and cigar box lids with pimpled rubber on light wooden “blades” as rackets. And after the world championships in Prague in 1936, where two defensive players took over an hour to contest one point, the net was lowered to make the pace of the game-play faster. (In another effort to make the game more fast paced and entertaining, rules were again changed in 2001- see Rules).
It Spreads
Also around this time, the sport spread to other European countries and to the United States. Asian countries like China, Korea and
Ping Pong Anyone?
The sport got its start in England towards the end of the 19th century when, after dinner, some upper-middle class Victorians decided to turn their dining room tables into miniature versions of the traditional lawn tennis playing field. Several different every-day objects were employed in constructing the sport. They used a line of books as the net. Rackets were lids from empty cigar boxes, and a little later, parchment paper stretched around a frame. The ball would be either a ball of string, or perhaps more commonly, a champagne cork or rubber ball.
Before “Table Tennis.”
When the game first started it was called by a number of different names. “Whif whaf,” “gossamer,” and “flim flam” were commonly used to describe it. The words, as can be assumed, were derived from the sound that the ball made when hit back and forth on the table. In 1901 though, English manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd registered one of the more popular names, Ping-Pong, as a copyright. He later sold the trademark to the Parker Brothers in the United States. Then in the 1920's the name and the sport were revived in Europe as table tennis.
Evolution
The turn of the century brought many other refinements to the sport. Players started using celluloid balls after the English man James Gibb discovered them during a trip to the United States in 1901 and proved them to be perfect for Ping-Pong. In 1903, E.C Goode replaced parchment paper and cigar box lids with pimpled rubber on light wooden “blades” as rackets. And after the world championships in Prague in 1936, where two defensive players took over an hour to contest one point, the net was lowered to make the pace of the game-play faster. (In another effort to make the game more fast paced and entertaining, rules were again changed in 2001- see Rules).
It Spreads
Also around this time, the sport spread to other European countries and to the United States. Asian countries like China, Korea and