History of Billiards

The word billiard is either derived from the French word billiard, one of the wooden sticks used to strike the balls, or bile, one of the billiard balls. The game of billiards evolved from a lawn game very similar to the game of croquet that was probably in France. The game was moved indoors to a wooden table with a green cloth that was supposed to represent grass. The billiard table also had a simple border placed around it’s borders. In the first plays of billiards, instead of being struck, the balls were shoved by wooden sticks called maces.

The cue was developed in the late 1600’s. When the ball lay near the rail, the mace was a very hard thing to use because of it’s big head. Whenever this happened the billiard players would turn the mace around, and hit the balls with the tail end of the mace. The tail was "queue", which is were we get the cue. For a long time, only men were allowed to use the cue. Women were forced to use the mace because it was thought that women would rip the cloth with the sharper cue stick.

Billiard tables originally had flat vertical walls for rails, and their only function was to keep the balls from falling off the table. The rails resembled river banks, and were even used to be called banks. When players found out that the balls would bounce off the rails, the y began to deliberately aiming at the banks. That was the invention of the "bank shot". The "bank shot" is were a ball is aimed, and shot at the wall as part of a shot.

The dominant game of billiards in Britain from about 1770 until the 1920’s was English Billiards. The British billiard tradition is still carried out in a billiard game called Snooker. They say it is possible to see a Snooker tournament in Britain everyday.

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