Magical Billiard Ball

Snooker is a game of simple shots played to perfection.

– Joe Davies

Hi! Today is the 10th of October, and today is the prominent day for billiard fans. Are you one of them? If so, please, join us! Almost every Russian lady is an ardent billiard admirer. Girls like this game; girls can play it and keep the standards up. But it should be mentioned that it’s hard for women to play billiards because their family and friends do not like the idea of women participation in the billiards as a kind of sports. But a lady, who can play billiards looks very attractively, doesn’t she?About 150 years ago, on October 10, the billiard ball was patented. John Wesley Hyatt did it in 1865 and won a contest to invent a material than could be used instead of ivory. To John Hyatt it is due that the billiard balls look civilized. Talking about “civilized”, we mean first of all elephant hunters and slaughtering of elephants. We should be grateful for inventing to John Hyatt, but elephants should be grateful for it as well.

The earliest billiard balls were made of wood. Clay followed wood. And when the age of wood and clay passed, the age of ivory came. Ivory billiard balls were used since 1630s until the early 20th century. Duke of Norfolk is considered to be the first inventor of ivory balls in 1588. The elephants were being rapidly slaughtered for their ivory in order to provide the needful quantity of billiard balls to the general public. It’s easy to count: a single elephant tusk produced just three to four ivory billiard balls. A lifetime of such balls was very limited – only two to three years; the balls had a tendency to crack or distort when played. Balls manufacturing took a lot of time and was awfully expensive, in addition to the danger of elephant hunting.

At the same time the game of billiard had become increasingly popular, especially in the United States. It entailed much ivory, much manufacturing as well. And surprisingly the supply of elephants became exhausted. At that a necessity arises to make cheap billiard balls in extremely large quantities. Inventors were confronted with the task of making an alternative material that could substitute ivory, with a US $10,000 prize. John Wesley Hyatt won this contest. And today we owe him the possibility to play billiards when we want to.

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