History
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Origin Story
The earliest known forms of bowling date back to ancient Egypt, with wall drawings depicting bowling being found in a royal Egyptian tomb dated to 3200 BC and miniature pins and balls in an Egyptian child's grave about 3200 BC. Remnants of bowling balls were found among artifacts in ancient Egypt going back to the Egyptian protodynastic period in 3200 BC.
About 2,000 years ago, in the Roman Empire, a similar game evolved between Roman legionaries entailing the tossing of stone objects as close as possible to other stone objects, which eventually evolved into Italian Bocce, or outdoor bowling.
In 1366, the first official mention of bowling in England was made, when King Edward III banned it as a distraction to archery practice. English King Henry VIII was an avid bowler. In 1511, he banned bowling for the lower classes and imposed a levy for private lanes to limit them to the wealthy. Protestant Reformation founder Martin Luther set the number of pins (which varied from 3 to 17) at nine.
In 1819, New York writer Washington Irving made the first mention of ninepin bowling in American literature in his story "Rip Van Winkle". By the late 1830s, New York's Knickerbocker Hotel housed a bowling alley with three lanes.
In 1846, the oldest surviving bowling lanes in the United States were built as part of Roseland Cottage, the summer estate of Henry Chandler Bowen (1831–1896) in Woodstock, Connecticut. The lanes, now part of Historic New England's Roseland Cottage House Museum contain Gothic Revival architectural elements in keeping with the style of the entire estate.
In 1848, the Revolutions of 1848 resulted in accelerated German immigration to the U.S., reaching 5 million by 1900, bringing their love of beer and bowling with them; by the late 19th century they made New York City a center of bowling.
In 1875, the National Bowling Association (NBA) was founded by 27 local clubs in New York City to standardize rules for ten-pin bowling, setting the ball size and the distance between the foul line and the pins, but failing to agree on other rules; it was superseded in 1895 by the American Bowling Congress.
Nine Pin Bowling
Nine-pin bowling (also known as ninepin bowling, nine-pin, kegel, or kegeln) is a bowling game played primarily in Europe. European championships are held each year. In Europe overall, there are some 130,000 players. Nine-pin bowling lanes are mostly found in Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Estonia, Switzerland, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, North Macedonia, Hungary, France, Brazil and Liechtenstein.
Standardized rules and organization of nine-pins were developed by the American Bowling Congress in 1895. Nine-pins was the most popular form of bowling in much of the United States from colonial times until the 1830s, when several cities in the United States banned nine-pin bowling out of moral panic over the supposed destruction of the work ethic, gambling, and organized crime. Ten-pin bowling is said to have been invented in order to meet the letter of these laws, even with evidence of outdoor bowling games in 1810 England being bowled with ten pins set in an equilateral triangle as is done today in ten-pin bowling.
Ten Pin Bowling
Ten-pin bowling arose in the early 1800s as an alternative to nine-pin bowling, with truly standardized regulations not being agreed on until nearly the end of that century. After the development of automated mechanical pinsetters, the sport enjoyed a "golden age" in the mid twentieth century.
Candlepin Bowling
Candlepin bowling is a variation of bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces and the New England region of the United States. It is played with a handheld-sized ball and tall, narrow pins that resemble candles, hence the name.
The International Candlepin Bowling Association (ICBA) website states that candlepin bowling was first played in 1880 in Worcester, Massachusetts, thought to have been developed by Justin White, owner of a billiards and bowling hall. A 1987 Sports Illustrated article stated the game was invented in 1881 in that town by one John J. Monsey, a billiards player, who is recognized for standardizing the game. A 1891 newspaper notice shows the incremental introduction of a single "candle-pin bowling set" into a bowling alley originally hosting other types of bowling. In 1906, Monsey created the National Duckpin and Candlepin Congress, which regulated ball size, pin shape and size, and lane surface characteristics, facilitating formation of leagues and other competitions.
In 1947, lawyers Howard Dowd and Lionel Barrow overcame the need for human pinsetters by inventing the first automatic candlepin pinsetter, called the "Bowl-Mor", the two inventors receiving a patent that was issued in 1956.
Duckpin Bowling
Duckpin balls are 4+3⁄4 in (12 cm) to 5 in (12.7 cm) in diameter, weigh 3 lb 6 oz (1.5 kg) to 3 lb 12 oz (1.7 kg) each, and lack finger holes. They are thus significantly smaller than those used in ten-pin bowling but are slightly larger and heavier than those used in candlepin bowling.
Duckpins, although arranged in a triangle identical to that used in ten-pin bowling, are shorter, slightly thinner, and lighter than their ten-pin equivalents, which makes it more difficult for the smaller ball to achieve a strike. For this reason, similar to candlepin bowling, the bowler is allowed three rolls per frame.
The origin of duckpin bowling has been disputed. A commonly recited assertion is that the sport began in Baltimore around 1900, at a bowling, billiards and pool hall owned by future baseball Hall of Famers John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson, both of the old (1882–1899) Baltimore Orioles. One such claim was reported in the Pittsburgh Press of March 3, 1929. However, research has since found references to duckpin dating to the early 1890s in New Haven, Boston and Lowell, Mass. Author Howard W. Rosenberg wrote in 2005 that his research showed the sport was around "at least as of 1894, and probably well before that" with former Duckpin News editor Stacy Karten stating in a 2016 publication that Rosenberg found an 1892 reference to duckpin in The Boston Globe.
In 1905 a variant called rubber band duckpins was introduced in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area by William Wuerthele, in which the pins are circled with hard rubber bands to increase rebound action in collisions, and therefore scoring. Wuerthele observed bowlers wasting their third ball as well as flying pins injuring pin boys, so, according to a defunct publication called The Ducks, Wuerthele added the rubber band to increase scoring.
Five-Pin Bowling
It was devised around 1909 by Thomas F. Ryan in Toronto, Ontario, at his Toronto Bowling Club, in response to customers who complained that the ten-pin game was too strenuous.
His customers complained that the 16-pound bowling ball was too heavy and that the game took too long to finish. Ryan experimented with other bowling games and eventually created a game called 5-pin bowling by 1909 that used smaller balls, five lighter pins and a new scoring system.
Thomas Ryan was born in 1872. He was a good baseball player, who almost made the Orioles as a pitcher. Instead, he decided to move to Toronto. For fifteen years he ran a pool hall on Young Street. Then, in 1905, he opened Canada’s first 10-pin bowling alley, called the Toronto Bowling Club.
At the time bowling was an exclusive gentlemen's sport. The founder of the Eaton’s department store was a regular there during his lunch hour. His customers complained that the heavy bowling balls made them tired for the rest of their workday. So Ryan began experimenting with different balls and pins.
Eventually he settled on five pins and a smaller ball. He also created a new scoring system for this game. At first, the new pins would fly around too much, sometimes even out the window. So that was why Ryan came up with the idea to add a heavy rubber band around the pins.
By 1909, 5-pin bowling was in full swing. Ryan never patented this new sport, but the next year he began opening a franchise of 5-pin bowling alleys all across Canada. He tried his luck in other businesses after this success. He bought a hotel, but prohibition made it unprofitable. He bought a large house and turned it into an antique store.
He became part of the Toronto sports committee, and helped overturn an 85 year old rule that prohibited sports on Sundays. He also judged the Miss Toronto pageant. He remained a bachelor until the age of 82 when he married his secretary. He passed away 7 years later, on November 19th 1961 in Toronto. Inducted into the Canada Sports Hall of Fame in 1971.
In 1921, the first ladies bowling league was formed. In 1927, the Canadian Bowling Association was founded. In 1957, the first pin setting machine was created.
Modern Era
In the 1880s, Brunswick Corporation (founded 1845) of Chicago, Illinois, maker of billiard tables began making bowling balls, pins, and wooden lanes to sell to taverns installing bowling alleys.
On 9 September 1895, the modern standardized rules for ten-pin bowling were established in New York City by the new American Bowling Congress (ABC) (later the United States Bowling Congress), who changed the scoring system from a maximum 200 points for 20 balls to a maximum 300 points for 12 balls, and set the maximum ball weight at 16 lb (7.3 kg), and pin distance at 12 in (30 cm). The first ABC champion (1906–1921) was Jimmy Smith (1885–1948).[30] In 1927 Mrs. Floretta "Doty" McCutcheon (1888–1967) defeated Smith in an exhibition match, founding a school that taught 500,000 women how to bowl.[31][32][33] In 1993 women were allowed to join the ABC. In 2005 the ABC merged with the Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) et al. to become the United States Bowling Congress (USBC).
In 1903, D. Peifer of Chicago, Illinois, invented a handicap method for bowling. In 1908, the now-oldest surviving bowling alley for the tenpin sport was opened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the basement of the Holler House tavern, containing the oldest sanctioned lanes in the United States.
In 1909, the first ten-pin bowling alley in Europe was installed in Sweden, but the game failed to catch on in the rest of Europe until after World War II. Meanwhile, ten-pin bowling caught on in Great Britain after hundreds of bowling lanes were installed on U.S. military bases during World War II.
In 1920–1933 Prohibition in the U.S. caused bowling alleys to disassociate from saloons, turning bowling into a family game and encouraging women bowlers.
About 1950, the Golden Age of Ten-Pin Bowling began, in which professional bowlers made salaries rivaling those of baseball, football, and hockey players; this ended in the late 1970s.
In 1952, American Machine and Foundry (AMF) of Brooklyn, New York, began marketing automatic Pinsetter machines.[45] This eliminated the need for pinboys and caused bowling to rocket in popularity, making the 1950s the Decade of the Bowler.
On 25 November 1963, Sports Illustrated published the article "A Guy Named Smith Is Striking It Rich", revealing that PBA stars made more money than other professional sports stars, for "with more than $1 million in prizes to shoot for, the nation's top professional bowlers are rolling in money." This was short-lived, however, for although the number of bowling alleys in the U.S. zoomed from 65,000 in 1957 to 160,000 in 1962, the U.S. bowling industry boom hit a brick wall in 1963.
In 1964, "Mr. Bowling" Don Carter became the first athlete to sign a $1 million endorsement contract: a multi-year deal with Ebonite International. On 27 February 1982, Earl Anthony won the Toledo Trust PBA National Championship, becoming the first bowler to reach $1 million in career earnings.
On 18 September 1988, the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, featured ten-pin bowling as a demonstration sport. On 2 August 1991, in Havana, Cuba, tenpin bowling became an international medal-level sport for the first time at the 1991 Pan American Games, and continues to this day.
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