Pin
Registered
I recently went searching for some old articles by John Roberts Junior (English billiards champion in the last couple of decades of the 1800s). They were published in four issues of the Strand Magazine in 1913 and 1914, and while I was able to access digital copies of the magazine online, the Roberts articles didn't seem to be available as a collection online, outside of the full magazines.
So I've collected them in a single PDF, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NDs9qcDc8kmp0CxQFV2D6ONTwLuIu5Rn/view?usp=sharing
(Hopefully that works. It's my first go sharing google docs, so let me know whether you can get in!)
The articles mention that they use a new method of depicting the shots ('shown for the first time'), using actual photographs with lines of wool on the table showing the paths of the balls, with photos taken from (roughly) the player's point of view and the spot on the spot-white ball indicating tip position. Australian snooker champion Eddie Charlton was using a similar method in photos in his books in the late 1970s and the 1980s.
Actually, what surprised me most was simply the magazine having photos mixed in with the text, at that time. I've seen old books with full-page (plate) photos from that era, but not the mixed arrangement in these articles. It looks very modern.
I'm no expert in such things though, so maybe it was common by then!
So I've collected them in a single PDF, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NDs9qcDc8kmp0CxQFV2D6ONTwLuIu5Rn/view?usp=sharing
(Hopefully that works. It's my first go sharing google docs, so let me know whether you can get in!)
The articles mention that they use a new method of depicting the shots ('shown for the first time'), using actual photographs with lines of wool on the table showing the paths of the balls, with photos taken from (roughly) the player's point of view and the spot on the spot-white ball indicating tip position. Australian snooker champion Eddie Charlton was using a similar method in photos in his books in the late 1970s and the 1980s.
Actually, what surprised me most was simply the magazine having photos mixed in with the text, at that time. I've seen old books with full-page (plate) photos from that era, but not the mixed arrangement in these articles. It looks very modern.
I'm no expert in such things though, so maybe it was common by then!
