History of Ping Pong

  Ping Pong started in England towards the end of the 19th century, in that time, some upper-middle class Victorians or people play Ping Pong after dinner, they decided to turn their dinning room tables into miniature versions of the traditional lawn tennis playing field.

  Several different every-day objects were employed in constructing the sport. They used a line of books as the net. Rackets were lids from empty cigar boxes, and a little later, parchment paper stretched around a frame. The ball would be either a ball of string, or perhaps more commonly, a champagne cork or rubber ball.

Name of Ping Pong

  Before the name came with "Ping Pong", it was called in different names such as "Whif whaf", "Gossamer", and "Flim Flam", these were commonly used to describe Ping Pong. The words, as can be assumed, were derived from the sound that the ball made when hit back and forth on the table. In 1901 though, English manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd registered one of the more popular names, Ping-Pong, as a copyright. He later sold the trademark to the Parker Brothers in the United States. Then in the 1920's the name and the sport were revived in Europe as table tennis.

  In that time, the sport spread to other European countries and to the United States. Asian countries like China, Korea and Japan are understood to have learnt about it from British Army officers who held posts in those places. There was an unofficial world championship held in 1901, but the first official world championship was held in London in 1927 by the International Table Tennis Federation. The ITTF was founded in Berlin in 1926 by England, Sweden, Hungary, India, Denmark, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Wales.