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Table Tennis is the offspring of lawn tennis during the nineteenth
century. It has become a home activity for students in the universities.
In 1891, Charles Barter of Gloucestershire registered the first patent
of the game. At the same period, Jason Gibb brought some toy celluloid
balls from a trip to America which he introduced as an alternative to
the cork or rubber balls that was being used at the time. This has
become popular that there were several manufacturers who market
the equipment of what they named as Gossima, Flim Flam and Whif Waff.
Mr. Gibb came up with the name “ping pong” which resulted from the ping
sound when the bat met the ball and the pong sound when it bounced the
table. A manufacturer by the name of John Jacques was convinced with the
ping pong name. It would attract
buyers of the vellum-covered rackets, balls and net that they were selling.
In 1901, a vogue for ping pong tournaments with 300 entries were
organized which was later on renamed in 1922 as the Table Tennis
Association.
In 1902 a visiting Japanese professor took the game back to the land of
the rising sun where he introduced it to university students. Shortly
after, a British salesman, Edward Shires, also introduced it to the
people of Vienna and Budapest. Table tennis had also begun to spread
outside the distinctly middle-class residence of London and leagues
sprang up in provincial towns as far apart as Plymouth and Sunderland.
In 1922, such celebrity as Jack Hobbs the cricketer, and other famous
names of the time from the world of sport formed an All England Club.
The Daily Mirror sponsored a nationwide tournament which attracted
40,000 competitors. Table tennis was consistently on the record!
In April 24, 1927, the English Table Tennis Association was organized,
under the chairmanship and direction of the late Ivor Montague, son of
Lord Ewatthling. Montague was not only to become the architect of modern
day table tennis, but he also achieved critical acclaim as both a film
producer and director. At the time, The ETTA had a membership of 19
leagues, but now as over 300, with around 75,000 registered players.
In 1927, the first World Championships were held and were won by a
Hungarian, Dr. Jacobi. Apart from the famous Fred Perry redressing the
balance for England in 1929, this was to be the start of an
unprecedented run of success for the Hungarians who dominated the game
throughout the Thirties. Team leader, Victor Barna, whose skill and
inspiration contributed to elevate the game into becoming a prestigious
sport.
In 1950s, the game has turned upside down by the arrival of the sponge
or sandwich rubber, the revolutionary new material for rackets which up
till now had been relatively simple affairs with a universal thin
covering of pimpled rubber. Until this time, spin had played only a
minor part in a game that had been dominated by the defensive style of
play. But these new weapons, introduced by the Japanese, had the
capacity to move the ball around in an almost magical way. The ITTF, the
game's ruling body, was quick to legislate in a bid to control this new
development, present in some quarters as equipping players with an
unfair advantage. The thickness of the sponge and rubber sandwich was
controlled and remains so to this day. But the nature of the game had
been changed, establishing the fast attacking speed and spin style of
our current champions.
In 1988, table tennis has been recognized as an Olympic Sport, featured
for the first time in the Games in Seoul, Korea Television coverage of
the men's singles final attracted an amazing worldwide audience of two
billion.
In China, the game is played by literally millions in school, at work,
and in the park. Their leading players are considered as national
heroes.
Today, the sport both in England and abroad stands strong and is growing
year by year.
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