What came first - the billiard ball or the billiard table?
It is my contention that the balls always came first.
In the beginning, there was a ball of a certain size and composition - and an ageless child dreamt up a game to play...with that ball. And so it began - an evolution of balls and games together. But give credit to the ball - for if there were no balls, there would never have been a need for a field, a game or the magnificent pool table.
So here’s a fun and rambling piece I tossed together on the Imagined Evolution Of Billiard Balls.
The following progression was thrown together in haste merely to illustrate one possibility, with a visual example (albeit using modern-day ball sets in most cases) and is not intended as a historical account by any means. I thought this may be a fun yet challenging task to come up with a reasonable summation to an age-old question I’ve heard for decades: “How did the billiard ball - and the games we play with them - evolve into what we see today?”
Let’s play....
In the beginning...most likely, balls of the same color were used: ARAMITH WHITES
Plain white balls became too commonplace. Time for new colors. Like the ARAMITH REDS
There soon needed to be a way to differentiation between balls for player 1 and player 2 - and the easiest way to do that would be to have a ball color for each player. ARAMITH CASINO
The ideas and desire for another other way to choose a particular ball from your opponent became necessary - a simple design element that easily morphed into solids and stripes: the PRESTIGE SET
Adding numbers would be a simple process someone proclaims, resulting in something akin to the HIGHSKORE VERTICALS
Invariably, the numbering had to evolve along more historic lines while bringing a level of par extraordinaire to the baize. The amazing HYATT ROMANIQUES
A most likely progression was then adding numbers to one color, sophisticated and yet more everyday use ball set: ARAMITH RUSSIAN PYRAMIDS
The idea to combine what they’ve seen so far would lead to adding those numbers to each of the solids and stripes along with new materials as showcased with the HYATT FANCY O’s
More artistic and elaborate elements surely followed. The HYATT DIRECT SITE HEXAGONALS
A noteworthy period for most players today was the transitional design from early clay ball sets to the plastics and phenolic era we see today - and the many darted designs bearing the honorable name Brunswick and their illustrious CENTENNIAL
part 2 of 3 next...
