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The History of Bowling
Where the game began
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Bowling is one of the oldest and most widely played of international games with a history dating back to the Stone Age. However, the first actual evidence of bowling can be traced back to 3,000 B.C. in ancient Egypt. In the 1930s, British anthropologist Sir Flinders Petrie discovered the ruins of a round object resembling a bowling ball and marble bars resembling bowling pins in a child's grave.
German historian William Pehle claims that bowling began in his country around 300 AD. At that time, village dances and celebrations exhibited a similar form of the game, where stones were rolled at nine wooden clubs called kegles. In Germany, bowlers are still on occasion referred to as "keglers."
In England, records of a game like bowling were recorded around the 1100s. The English played other games, which were variations of bowling, such as half-bowls, skittles and ninepins. There is some verification that a type of bowling was in fashion in England about 1366, when King Edward III supposedly outlawed it to keep his troops concentrated on their archery practice. And it is almost definite that bowling was popular during Henry VIII's reign, when it was played primarily by nobility. Back then, bowling was an outdoor game, with the first indoor game played in London around 1455. The first indoor lanes were composed of covered sheds with lanes made of wood or sun-baked clay.
By this time, there were a variety of "pin" games, as well as games where a ball was thrown at objects besides pins. Among them was an eccentric games still played in Edinburgh, where the player swings a fingerless ball between his legs and tosses it at the pins. There were and still are other versions of ninepins in Western Europe, such as Italian bocce ball, French petanque and British lawn bowling.
In the Netherlands people played a related game called Dutch pins, which was introduced to America in the 1600s with the first Dutch settlers. In this style of bowling, the nine pins were arranged in a diamond patter, and the alley was often a plank around .5 meters (one and a half feet) wide and up to 27.4 meters (90 feet) long. Most likely, the English, Dutch and German settlers all introduced their own style of bowling to America. The pins used during this period were tall and slim. Around 1850, heavier bottle-shaped pins replaced the earlier ones to make scores higher. This propelled bowling into a game where strikes and spares became vital for bowlers.
Upon its establishment in the states, a tenth pin was added, which according to time-honored legend, was to dodge a ruling in the 1840s by the Connecticut Legislature which outlawed nine-pins because it promoted prevalent gambling.
Although it is unclear for certain where the tenpin game evolved, by the late 1800s, it was common in New York, Ohio and as far "west" as Illinois. Though details like ball weights and pin dimensions fluctuated by area of the country. All that changed when restaurateur Joe Thum gathered representatives of the different regional bowling clubs.
Bowling was very popular in New York City in the mid 1800s, with more than 400 alleys in 1850. When nine clubs formed the National Bowling Association (NBA) in 1875, its main purpose was to standardize rules as well as to eliminate gambling. The NBA was short-lived, but the rules established by its members became the basic rules of bowling.
Then, on September 9, 1895 at Beethoven Hall in New York City, the American Bowling Congress (ABC) was established as a national federation of clubs. Following that, would be additional standardization and major national competitions. Once organized and with agreed upon standards, the game increased in popularity and respectability. In 1901, more than 40 teams from nine states competed in the ABC's first National Bowling Championships in Chicago.
Although women were bowling in the late 1800s, the American Bowling Congress was for men only. It wasn't until 1917 that the Women's National Bowling Association was launched in St. Louis, and the following year, it held its first national championship. In 1971, the WNBA was renamed the Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC).
The first permanent American bowling location possibly was for lawn bowling in New York's Battery area. This section of the financial district is still called Bowling Green by New Yorkers.
In 1909, Sweden became the first European country to adopt the American form of tenpin bowling. Gradually spreading through Europe, several Northern countries including Denmark and Norway formed the International Bowling Association in 1926. International tournaments have been held in Sweden, Berlin and New York.
After World War II, bowling became widespread in Great Britain, primarily due to the bowling alleys that had been built on U.S. military bases. In the 1960s, the sport began spreading to Australia, the Orient, Mexico and other Latin American countries with the aid of equipment manufacturers.
As part of the continuing evolvement of the game, in 1905 the first rubber ball, the "Evertrue" was introduced, replacing the former balls which were mostly lignum vitae, a very hard wood. Then in 1914, the Brunswick Corporation successfully presented the Mineralite ball, publicizing a mysterious rubber compound. Lanes in the 1800s were built of baked clay, and eventually were replaced by hard woods like maple.
Another major technological advancement in bowling was the presentation of the automatic pinspotter in 1951, when the American Machine and Foundry Company (AMF) acquired the patents to Gottfried Schmidt's automatic pinspotter. No longer did bowling alley owners have to depend on "pinboys." This miraculous machine revolutionized and modernized the bowling industry.
Since then, bowling continued to advance with the launching of "bumpers," devices that are placed in the gutter lanes to prevent gutter balls.
When tournaments first began, there was not always a clear division between amateur and professional bowlers, since amateurs were allowed to collect prize money. Most of the professionals were instructors, but there were some who toured the country and gave exhibitions or played matches for money.
Three professionals who were best known to the public were: Andy Varipapa, a colorful trick shot artist who spent 30 years entertaining crowds throughout North America and won two consecutive All-Star tournaments, in 1946 and 1947; Floretta McCutcheon, the leading woman ambassador from 1927 through 1939, who gave thousands of clinics, lessons and exhibitions; and Ned Day, who toured and also did a popular series of movie shorts during the 1940s, seem by millions in theaters and, later, in television reruns.
Ned Day retired in 1958, the year the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) was established. Under the leadership of Eddie Elias, a successful promoter, agent and entrepreneur, the PBA and the new Pro Bowlers Tour (PBT) set up a regular tour of sponsored tournaments, which were often broadcast on ABC television.
Although there were only a handful at first, the number of tournaments grew quickly during the 1960s, mostly because of television. Later telecasts of the Ladies Pro Bowlers Tour (today known as the Professional Women's Bowling Association, PWBA) were viewed by millions of Americans who took of the increasingly popular game.
In order to fit tournaments into TV time slots, Elias created the "stepladder" format that's still used in almost all PBA events today. The way this works is competitors first play a series of qualifying games, with the top five finishers advancing into the stepladder round. The fifth- and fourth-place qualifiers bowl a match, and the winner advances to bowl against the third-place qualifier. And so it continues up the stepladder, until the winner meets the first-place qualifier in the final match.
When television entered the arena of bowling in the 1950s, it catapulted the popularity of the game. NBC's broadcast of "Championship Bowling" was the very first network coverage of bowling. Following were shows like "Make That Spare," "Bowling For Dollars" and "Celebrity Bowling." In 1961, ABC became the first network to televise a competition of the Pro Bowlers Association (PBA).
The Professional Women's Bowling Association (PWBA), founded in 1960, established a similar tour. Because it did not become successful, a group of players left to form the Ladies' Professional Bowlers Association (LPBA) in 1974. The two merged in 1978, forming the Women's Professional Bowlers Association (WPBA), which became the Ladies Professional Bowlers Tour (LPBT) in 1981. (Did you follow all that?)
As in similar sports like golf, the women's tour isn't nearly as profitable as the men's, mostly because of the lack of television coverage. The PBA tour boasts about 40 tournaments, many of which award $40,000 or more for first place, while the LPBT tour offers only about 15 tournaments and first place money is usually less than $20,000.
In 1988, bowling was an exhibition sport at the Seoul Olympic games. In 1992 and 1996, a modern bowling facility was installed in the Athlete's Village at Barcelona, Spain and Atlanta, Georgia where champion bowlers were holding exhibitions, offered instructions and competed with Olympic athletes. Bowling is already a medal sport in Asian and Commonwealth games and is expected to be a medal sport in the Olympics sometime in the future.
Bowling continues to grow in popularity, possibly because if the stream of young bowlers who are attracted to the game. The American Junior Bowling Congress, an affiliate of the ABC, sanctions league and tournament play of young bowlers through college age. Though collegiate bowling gets little media attention, there are many conferences offering team competition and championship tournaments.
Surveys report that one out of every three Americans bowl-more than 72 million men, women and children. Bowling is also enjoyed in over 90 countries around the world as one of the largest participatory sports, and top athletes compete in worldwide competitions. A 1995 survey by American Sports Data Inc. ranked bowling as America's most popular recreational sport.
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