Ping Pong History and Rules

From Champagne Corks to Forrest Gump

Ping Pong traces its origins to the similar game of table tennis played back during the time in England when all those stuffy upper crust types needed something to do to amuse themselves after a dinner of steak & kidney pie and blood pudding. Since they couldn't step outside for fear of trampling upon all those pickpocketing, gruel-eating orphans who controlled the muddy streets-not to mention the fear of a certain Ripper named Jack who might at any moment decide to turn his attention away from women of easy virtue and toward the corseted young ladies being courted by Hugh Grant-looking fops and dandies-they needed something simple and fun to play indoors. Those wacky English! In between such clever retorts as "Bob's your uncle and Fanny's your aunt", they played table tennis using such things as a champagne cork for a ball.

Ping pong as we know it today can pretty much be traced back to one James Gibb. Long before he became a member of the famous singing brothers known as the Bee Gees, in 1899 this engineer was struck by a brilliant Shelbyville idea. He took a piece of string and tied it across the traditional table tennis table (lovely alliteration, that) and then smacked a rubber ball across it. Before too long, grape-stompers across France were out of work as a recession hit the champagne industry hard, and ping pong became a stable of play even among those with little leisure time on their hands. Of course, Gibb had to make an even more brilliant discovery before the old-fashioned table tennis turned into the newfangled ping pong we all love today.

One word: celluloid.