jStar's Pool Ball Page

The game of billiards evolved from a lawn game much like croquet in Europe in the 1500's. The game was moved indoors at some point and played on a table covered in green cloth, presumably, to simulate a lawn.

The first billiard balls are believed to be stone, eventually being replaced by balls made of wood and clay. Rails were mounted around the edge of the table to prevent the balls from falling off. The balls were shoved around the table by a wooden stick called a mace.

In the 1600's, elephant ivory became the material of choice for billiard balls. Affordable only to the rich and affluent at that time, it offered a glossy, attractive appearance and good performance. The common people of the time used the less expensive wood or clay for their billiard balls.

Ivory balls were expensive and time-consuming to manufacture however. Only 4 or 5 balls could be made from a single ivory tusk, and these tusks had to be imported from Africa or Asia.

The tusks were cut into rough blanks and turned into over-sized balls. These blank balls had to aged for 2 to 3 years to stabilize so they wouldn't crack and distort when played.

These aged balls were then hand-turned by skilled craftsman to perfectly round balls of just the right size and weight. Many balls were rejected because they were the wrong weight due to different densities of ivory, or the craftsman who made them didn't make them perfectly round.

Eventually the supply of elephants began to thin out as there were thousands killed to supply the world appetite for billiard balls. Because of this scarcity, ivory balls became even more expensive.

Even with all these faults, ivory billiard balls were still popular by the early 1800s. Due to the limited amounts of elephant ivory available, a contest was held in 1865 by the Phelan and Collender Company of New York City to find a replacement material to make the balls from.

John Wesley Hyatt won a $10,000 prize and was granted US patent US50359 for his contribution of Celluloid as the replacement material to build billiard balls. This industrial plastic was used for a while but it had a bad tendency to explode during the manufacturing process.

In more recent times, phenolic resin, polyester, and acrylic have replaced the materials formerly used in pool balls. These materials offer great strength and are highly resistant to chipping and cracking.