The History of Table Tennis
This indoors option to lawn tennis originated over a hundred years ago. The history of table tennis began as an indoor game often called “miniature” tennis. The idle rich looking for a fun pastime during cold or rainy weather first played the sport in England.
Common objects served as equipment in the early days of table tennis. Players used handy items such as a champagne cork for a ball. A line of stacked books might serve for the net, and a cigar box lid the paddle to bat across a tight ball of string to the opponent.
In 1901, James Gibb, an English enthusiast of table tennis, found celluloid balls on a trip to the U.S. and took the idea to use them for the game back home. E.C. Goode, in the same year, invented the modern version of the paddle by fixing a sheet of pimpled rubber to a wooden blade. The sound generated in play gave the game its first nickname of “ping-pong.”
In 1921, the Table Tennis Association was founded in England. The International Table Tennis Federation followed in 1926. London hosted the first official world championship in 1927. Parker Bros, the toy and game giants, owned and copyrighted the name Ping-Pong in 1928.
In 1931, the first official National Ping-Pong Championship was held in New York City. There were 369 entries that each paid a $1 entry fee. The field was restricted to 16 tables and men only players.
In the 1950s paddles designed with a rubber sheet and sponge layer combination introduced greater speed and spin to the game.
In 1971, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai invited the U.S. table tennis team to Peking. American table tennis players and three journalists became the first Americans to set foot on China's soil since Mao Tse-tung took control of China 22 years earlier.
In what became known as “ping-pong diplomacy“, more than two decades of hostility between China and the United States was suspended over a friendly game of table tennis.
A year later President Richard Nixon made his history-making visit to China. Table tennis has the largest player-base of any sport. The Chinese have been the most dominant players for the last forty-five years.
Table tennis became an Olympic sport at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Since that year, China has won 16 of the 20 gold medals awarded. No American has ever won a medal in the sport except for Forrest Gump.
On 9 November 2006, Trevor Farley set the Guinness World Record for the longest time to keep control of a table tennis bat and ball. The duration was 2 hours 10 minutes and 16 seconds.
In the United States, table tennis has been played more as a past time of the early days than as a competitive sport. People there do at times get competitive but only with friends and family, but you'll find many more people playing on pool tables than picking up a table tennis bat. In European countries, they take table tennis very seriously. They have schools dedicated to coaching the sport, association leagues, and championships. Professional players travel all over the world competing in the sport and table tennis tables are common in leisure clubs, along with table football tables and other games.
Players training for table tennis internationally practice sprinting, aerobics, techniques, weight lifting, and lateral jumping. World-class players can put up to 9,000 rpm of spin on table tennis balls.
Maybe someday table tennis in the US will become more popular as a sport. If more players took up the game, new clubs would form, and opportunities for the future of the history of table tennis could open up. Everyone involved in the sport agrees until there is a national hero in the sport, it will stay in our garages and recreation rooms. Could that hero be you?
This is an original news article © The Kids Window
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