The Game » History

Here you can find a short story about the history of bowling.

1. The first primitive forms of bowling

In 1930 the British anthropologist Sir Flinders Petrie and his team of archaeologists discovered all sorts of primitive bowling balls, bowling pins and other materials in the grave of an Egyptian boy from 3200 BC. It appears that the ancient Egyptians played a primitive form of bowling and that bowling is more than 5200 years old.
The German historicist William Pehle claimed that in 200 BC an ancient form of bowling was played in his home country. In Germany of that time a form of bowling was played during festivals, where stones were thrown at nine wooden sticks, which were called 'kegles'. Due to this fact bowlers in Germany are also known as 'keglers'.
In England bowling first appeared around 1100. Hard evidence of bowling was found in the year 1366. In this year King Edward III forbid his troops to play bowling, so that they would spend more time on the practice of arching. During the regime of King Henry VIII bowling became a popular sport amongst the British population.
In that same period a similar type of bowling was played in the Netherlands and it were the Dutch settlers who introduced the first forms of bowling, which was called 'Dutch pins', in America during the 16th century. In Manhattan the place where the Dutch played this form of bowling is sometimes still referred by as the 'Bowling Green'.
Other alternative forms of bowling were also played in this period of time. The most extreme form could be found in Scotland. Here the player threw a ball with no holes between his legs towards the pins and after he had released the ball the player would slide towards the pins on his belly. Other related forms of bowling are 'Bocce' from Italy, 'Petanque' from France and 'Lawn Bowling' from England.

2. The rise of bowling in the United States

The first notice of bowling, which was introduced in the United States by settlers from Europe, in important American literature was made by the famous writer Jonathan Swift when he wrote that Washington Irving woke up due to the sound of 'crashing ninepins'.
The first permanent location where bowling used to be played was in the New York 'Battery', which first had been in Dutch hands and after them in English hands. The sport used to be called 'Bowl on the Green' because of the lawn bowling. This area of Manhattan is now the center of the financial world, but is sometimes still referred as the 'Bowling Green' by the New Yorkers.
Ninepin bowling became very popular in the United States, but eventually it got a setback. Ninepin bowling attracted a lot of gamblers and they gave bowling a bad name. Because of the gambling a law in Connecticut got approved in 1841 that prohibited people to own ninepin bowling lanes. But people simply got around this law by putting an extra bowling pin on the deck and this meant the start of tenpin bowling.
It is still unknown where tenpin bowling first started, but we do know that by the end of the 19th century tenpin bowling was played in many states such as New York, Illinois and Ohio. But back then there were no general rules for the sport. The weight and size of balls, pins and lanes differed from state to state.

But this all changed when restaurateur Joe Thumb organised a meeting between representatives from different regional clubs in 1895. On 9 September 1895 the American Bowling Congress (ABC) was founded at the Beethoven Hall in New York. Soon the ABC issued general rules and people became able to start national competitions and tournaments. The number of non-standardised leagues, which didn't used the general rules, decreased rapidly.
The ABC was only meant for male bowlers, although women were playing bowling since the second half of the 19th century. Women had to wait until 1917 (in the same period as the up come of feminism) that women got their own congress. In that year the Women International Bowling Congress was founded in St. Louis. Women from all over the United States decided, with the support of proprietor Dennis Sweeney, to also compete in national competitions and tournaments.

3. The development of modern bowling

At the beginning of the 20th century technology used in bowling took a giant step forward. Before this time bowling balls were made of a hard type of wood, called 'lignum vitae'. In 1905 the first rubber bowling ball, named the 'Evertrue', was showed to the public. Nine years later (1914) the Brunswick Corporation, which then was a manufacturer of billiards, released the first Mineralite Ball on the market, which became a huge success due to its mysterious rubber compound.
Because of this technological breakthrough bowling had an enormous growth in standardisation and it also meant the growth of different organisations. It was however another technological breakthrough that led to an even bigger growth of bowling. This was the introduction of the automatic pinsetter. Morehead Patterson, vice-president of the American Machine and Foundry company (AMF, back then a manufacturer of machines for the bakery, tobacco and apparel businesses), bought the patents for this machine from Gottfried Schmidt, who invented it in his garage in 1936.

The pinsetter was first showed to the public at the ABC National Championships in Buffalo in 1946. It lasted another five years (1951) before the machine was placed for the first time, which happened in Michigan, and in 1952 the machines were taken into production. The 'pin boys', who used to set up the pins again, were replaced by higher educated and better paid mechanics who could run the bowling lanes for hours without any problems.
In the 1950's television began to experiment with bowling and not without success. The popularity of bowling grew enormous. The first broadcast of a bowling match was made by NBC about 'Championship Bowling'. Beside this coverage other bowling shows appeared on television, such as 'Make That Spare', 'Celebrity Bowling' and 'Bowling For Dollars'.
Eddie Elias, an successful promoter, agent and entrepreneur, founded the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) in 1958 with 33 members. The PBA was founded to give the advanced bowler the chance to become a pro and to give bowling the status of a grant sport. More than 3500 bowlers are nowadays a member of the PBA. It was later joined by the Ladies Professional Bowling Tour (now the Professional Women Bowling Association, PWBA), a pro tour for women. In 1961 ABC was the first network to broadcast the Pro Bowlers Tour. Because of excellent marketing the Pro Bowlers Tour became a popular part of ABC's sports broadcasting. This was viewed by millions of Americans and they became very interested in bowling.
Today the sport of bowling is played by over 100 million people in more than 90 different countries. This number just seems to be growing and growing. There is an active lobby for bowling as an Olympic sport by the Fédération Internationale des Quilleurs (FIQ), the world governing body for the sport of tenpin and ninepin bowling, and top athletes regularly compete in worldwide competitions and tournaments.