The Interesting History of Bowling

The History of bowling has so much ambiguity involved in its date of origin, that one wonders how we can establish a true time that it began. This ambiguity is entwined in the archeological Egyptian discoveries. When one seeks the best information they bounce between 3200BC to 5200BC. It seems, from the deepest investigations that the date, which raises the most, is 5200BC. Consequently since the actual date is not readily agreed to, we must use this one for argument purposes.

It seems as though the game began by Egyptian children and adults, rolling stones at standing objects, endeavoring to knock them down. The innovative enginuity of the Egyptian people is not spectacular in light of their advancement of building all those difficult and complex structures. The pyramids were and ingenious endeavor by far and until today we cannot agree on how it was accomplished. The interior was as difficult to comprehend as the exterior. Hence we cannot discount any of their feats, discoveries, or inventiveness.

A British anthropologist, Sir Flinders Petrie, discovered in the 1930's a collection of objects in a child's grave in Egypt that appeared to him to be used for a crude form of bowling. If he was correct, then bowling traces its ancestry to 3200 BC. Other statements are that he traced it back to 5200 BC. The later seems to be the most used therefore we will go along with it. There were other discoveries confirming the same conclusion.

Therefore, here we are at the beginning of bowling dated back to 5200 years Before Christ was born; (what BC stands for). Using this date that means bowling is about 7200 years old. WOW! That is a fantastic background for a sport that is rated both the most popular and the largest participation sport in the world today.

Naturally, through the years by the extreme innovativeness of man, has created the many different types of bowling that are prevalent today and caused the evolvement of today’s game known as the ten pin version of the game. The reason this most popular form of bowling is called ten pins, based on the other ones, I will never comprehend. Therefore, our stubbornness and strong desire to not change, has resulted in three basically different types of bowling, presently played.

Of Course the most popular is the one called Ten Pin Bowling! Since all of the other types also use the same ten pin configuration that makes the name Ten Pin Bowling, to be very odd. I would opt for the name big pins!

The other two are Duck pins, and Candle Pins. Duck Pins are a small replica of the big pins and have two other innovations. One is a called barrel pins; it is the duck pin without a head. The other is called the rubber duck and is simply the duck pin with band of rubber around the mid section of the pin. Candle pins are very tall and narrow at the mid section. They look very much like a candle; hence they were named candle pins.

The three types are bowled with a small light ball. The weight varies from 4 ounces to approximately 6 ounces. It fits in the palm of your hand and the many variations of delivery cause the ball to roll differently down the lane. In a small way it is similar to the large and heavy ball we use in Ten Pin Bowling.

The history behind this duck pin bowling was that ten pin bowling originally was a winter sport and bowlers used to practice in the summer at the few different alleys (that is what they were called then) that were open; with a small 6 inch wide ball.
In 1900, summer bowlers at the Diamond Alleys in Baltimore suggested it might be interesting to trim down the standard pins to match the size of the ball. Manager John Van Sant liked the idea. He had a wood turner do the job and many of his customers enjoyed the new bowling game. At first, the rules of ten-pin bowling were used. But, because it's much harder to get strikes and spares, one small rule change was made: A bowler is allowed to use three bowls on each turn. If all ten pins are knocked down with three balls, it simply counts a score of ten.

Van Sant demonstrated the new sport to the owners of the alley, John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson. Though they're much better known as baseball managers, McGraw and Robinson were also avid duck hunters. When they saw the way the small pins flew wildly around the alley, one of them remarked that it looked liked a "flock of flying ducks."
That was the beginning of duckpin bowling. Originally a summer sport, it became so popular in the area that winter leagues were organized in Baltimore in 1903 and in Washington, D. C., in 1904. During the 1920s, duckpin bowling spread along the east coast, from New England to Georgia. While the rules were basically the same everywhere, balls, pins, and lane sizes weren't standardized.

In our future articles we will go deeper into the individual games.

Thank you for reading….
The Bowling Professor,

Ed Signoretti