乒乓球的历史

 

打了这么多年乒乓球，估计很多球友并不清楚乒乓球早期的那些事儿。

以下转自维基百科，第一句话翻译：乒乓球起源于1880年的英国，是当时的上流社会正餐后的休闲运动。

History[edit]

 

Parker Brothers Ping-Pong game

The game originated in England during the 1880s, where it was played among the upper-class as an after-dinner parlour game.^[4][5] It has been suggested that the game was first developed by British military officers in India or South Africa who brought it back with them.^[6] A row of books was stood up along the center of the table as a net, two more books served as rackets and were used to continuously hit a golf-ball from one end of the table to the other. Alternatively table tennis was played with paddles made of cigar box lids and balls made of champagne corks. The popularity of the game led game manufacturers to sell equipment commercially. Early rackets were often pieces of parchment stretched upon a frame, and the sound generated in play gave the game its first nicknames of "wiff-waff" and "ping-pong". A number of sources indicate that the game was first brought to the attention of Hamley's of Regent Street under the name "Gossima".^[7][8] The name "ping-pong" was in wide use before British manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd trademarked it in 1901. The name "ping-pong" then came to be used for the game played by the rather expensive Jaques's equipment, with other manufacturers calling it table tennis. A similar situation arose in the United States, where Jaques sold the rights to the "ping-pong" name to Parker Brothers. Parker Brothers then enforced their trademark for the term in the 1920s making the various associati** change their names to "table tennis" instead of the more common, but trademarked, term.^[9]

The next major innovation was by James W. Gibb, a British enthusiast of table tennis, who discovered novelty celluloid balls on a trip to the US in 1901 and found them to be ideal for the game. This was followed by E.C. Goode who, in 1901, invented the modern version of the racket by fixing a sheet of pimpled, or stippled, rubber to the wooden blade. Table tennis was growing in popularity by 1901 to the extent that tournaments were being organized, books being written on the subject,^[7] and an unofficial world champi**hip was held in 1902. During the early 1900s, the game was banned in Russia because the rulers at the time believed that playing the game had an adverse effect on players' eyesight.^[10]

In 1921, the Table Tennis Association was founded in Britain, and the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) followed in 1926.^[4][11] London hosted the first official World Champi**hips in 1926. In 1933, the United States Table Tennis Association, now called USA Table Tennis, was formed.^[4][12]

In the 1930s, Edgar Snow commented in Red Star Over China that the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War had a "passion for the English game of table tennis" which he found "bizarre".^[13]

In the 1950s, rackets that used a rubber sheet combined with an underlying sponge layer changed the game dramatically,^[4] introducing greater spin and speed.^[14] These were introduced to Britain by sports goods manufacturer S.W. Hancock Ltd. The use of speed glue increased the spin and speed even further, resulting in changes to the equipment to "slow the game down". Table tennis was introduced as an Olympic sport at the Olympics in 1988.^[15]