Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). Most references to bowling are to pin bowling, specifically tenpin bowling (played in the United Kingdom, Commonwealth countries and elsewhere). Bowling can also refer to target bowling, such as lawn bowls. Bowling is played by 120 million people in more than 90 countries, including 70 million people in the United States.
Types Bowling is divided into two general classes: pin bowling and target bowling.
Pin bowling
In pin bowling, players knock over pins at the end of a long, smooth surface known as a lane. Lanes have a wood or synthetic surface with a protective, lubricant applied in a variety of patterns that affect ball motion. A strike is scored when all the pins are knocked down on the first roll, and a spare is scored when all pins are knocked down on the second roll. The most common type of pin bowling is tenpin bowling; variants include candlepin, duckpin, nine-pin (kegel), and five-pin. The game of skittles is the forerunner of modern pin bowling.
Tenpin bowling is the most popular type of bowling. It involves 10 pins arranged in a triangle at the end of a bowling lane. Tenpin balls have finger holes and possibly a thumb hole. When the term bowling is used, it usually refers to tenpin bowling. Nine-pin bowling (commonly called kegeln in Germany) is common in Europe. It uses nine pins arranged in a diamond formation. Candlepin bowling: Candlepins are thinnest and tallest (), and have matching top and bottom ends. Candlepin balls are the smallest and lightest () of any bowling sport. Fallen candlepins not cleared during a frame. Duckpin bowling: Duckpin bowling is similar to tenpin, but with shorter pins and a smaller ball having no holes. Five-pin bowling: Five-pins are taller than duckpins but shorter than tenpins, are between duckpins and candlepins in diameter, and have a rubber girdle. Five-pin balls are small and without holes. The sport is practiced primarily in Canada.
Target bowling Target bowling is usually played outdoors on a specially-prepared lawn or natural terrain, like grass. Depending on the game, players roll or throw a ball in an attempt to land it closest to a mark or target ball in the arena.
Lawn bowls, bocce, carpet bowls, pétanque, and boules have indoor and outdoor varieties. Curling may be considered target bowling on ice.
History
Ancient world
The earliest known forms of bowling date back to ancient Egypt, with wall drawings depicting bowling found in a royal tomb dated to 3200 BCE and miniature pins and balls in a child's grave from the same time. Remnants of bowling balls were found among Egyptian artifacts dating back to the Egyptian protodynastic period in 3200 BCE. What is thought to be a child's game with porphyry (stone) balls, a miniature trilithon, and nine breccia-veined, alabaster vase-shaped figures thought to resemble the modern game of skittles, was found in Naqada in 1895. Cornell University Library. (archeologist's drawing)
Balls were made with the husks of grains, covered in a material such as leather and bound with string. Balls made of porcelain have also been found, indicating by their size and weight that they were rolled on the ground rather than thrown. Some resemble the modern jack used in target-bowling games. Bowling games were cited by Herodotus as an invention of the Lydians in Asia Minor. A similar game evolved among Roman legionaries entailing the tossing of stone objects as close as possible to other stone objects, which eventually evolved into Italian bocce (outdoor bowling). In Germany in the third or fourth century AD, a religious ritual involved cleansing oneself of sin by rolling a rock into a club (kegel) representing the heathen. Later pin bowlers were sometimes called "keglers".
Middle Ages
In 1299, the oldest-surviving known bowling green for target bowling was built: Master's Close, now the Old Bowling Green of the Southampton Bowling Club in Southampton, England. The green is still in use. Berlin and Cologne passed laws in 1325 limiting lawn-bowling bets to five shillings. King Edward III banned bowling as a distraction from archery practice.
From the 15th to the 17th centuries, lawn bowling spread from Germany to Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries. Playing surfaces were cinders or baked clay. Lawn-bowling lanes in London were first roofed in 1455, making bowling an all-weather game. Known as kegelbahns in Germany, they were often attached to taverns and guest houses. A 1463 public feast was held in Frankfurt, with a venison dinner followed by lawn bowling.
Modern era 16th to 18th centuries
King Henry VIII was an avid bowler. In 1511, he banned bowling for the lower classes and imposed a levy on private lanes to limit them to the wealthy. Martin Luther set the number of bowling pins (which varied from 3 to 17) at nine. He had a bowling lane built next to his home for his children, and sometimes rolled a ball himself.
On 29 July 1588, Francis Drake was reportedly playing bowls at Plymouth Hoe when the arrival of the Spanish Armada was announced; he replied, "We have time enough to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too." Henry Hudson discovered Hudson Bay in 1609, bringing Dutch colonization to New Amsterdam (later New York); Hudson's men reportedly brought a form of pin bowling with them. Late-17th-century Dutchmen enjoyed bowling at the Old King's Arms Tavern, near modern-day 2nd and Broadway in New York City. Bowling Green in New York City was built in 1733 on the site of a Dutch cattle market and parade ground, the city's oldest surviving public park.
19th century
A painting of Ipswich, England shows a man bowling with a triangular formation of ten pins before that variant of the sport is believed to have appeared in the United States. An 1828 auction notice in Ipswich cites "ten-pin and skittle grounds".
Washington Irving mentioned ninepin bowling for the first time in American literature in his 1819 story, "Rip Van Winkle". Newspaper articles and advertisements at least as early as 1820 (Click for image) The owner "has erected, for the amusement of those who favor him with their custom, a Ball and Ten Pin Alley". refer to "ten pin alleys", usually as a side attraction of a business or property. (Click for image) Reference to "keeper of the ten-pin alley". (Click for image) ● A slightly earlier, though less clearly legible, version of the same ad ran the previous month: ● Advertises a property having "a first rate ten pin alley". (Click for image) Advertises a property with a "commodious and well-adjusted ten-pin alley". (Click for image) Offering for rent, a "Public House" with "a good Ten Pin Alley attached". By the late 1830s, New York's Knickerbocker Hotel housed a three-lane bowling alley. (edition of New York Daily Herald) (clipping) The oldest surviving bowling lanes in the United States were built in 1846 as part of Roseland Cottage, the summer estate of Henry Chandler Bowen (1831–1896) in Woodstock, Connecticut. The lanes, now part of Historic New England's Roseland Cottage House Museum, have Gothic Revival architectural elements compatible with the estate. The Scottish Bowling Association for lawn bowling was founded in Scotland by 200 clubs in 1848; it was dissolved and revived in 1892. Glasgow cotton merchant William Wallace Mitchell (1803–1884) published Manual of Bowls Playing in 1864, which became a standard reference for lawn bowling in Scotland. The National Bowling Association (NBA) was founded in 1859 by 27 New York City clubs to standardize rules for tenpin bowling, setting the ball size and the distance between the foul line and the pins but failing to agree on other rules; it was superseded in 1895 by the American Bowling Congress. Candlepin bowling was invented in 1880 by Justin White. Brunswick Corporation (founded in 1845) of Chicago, Illinois, a manufacturer of billiard tables, began making bowling balls, pins, and wooden lanes during the 1880s to sell to taverns installing bowling alleys. Duckpin bowling was invented in Boston during the early 1890s, spreading to Baltimore around 1899. Joe Thum—who became known as the "father of modern bowling"—began opening tenpin bowling alleys (including at 401 Greenwich Street in the Tribeca West Historic District) and strove to elevate the sport's image to compete with upper-class diversions such as theaters and opera houses.
Rules for tenpin bowling were established in New York City on 9 September 1895 by the American Bowling Congress (ABC) (later the United States Bowling Congress), who changed the scoring system from a maximum 200 points for 20 balls to a maximum 300 points for 12 balls and set the maximum ball weight at and pin distance at . The first ABC champion (1906–1921) was Jimmy Smith (1885–1948). Floretta "Doty" McCutcheon (1888–1967) defeated Smith in a 1927 exhibition match and founded a school that taught 500,000 women how to bowl. Women were allowed to join the ABC in 1993, and two years later the ABC merged with the Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) to become the United States Bowling Congress (USBC).
Early 20th century
The English Bowling Association was founded in 1903 by cricketer W. G. Grace. On 1 January 2008, it merged with the English Women's Bowling Association to become Bowls England. In 1903, D. Peifer of Chicago developed a handicap method for bowling. Rubber duckpin bowling was invented two years later by Willam Wuerthele of Pittsburgh, and it caught on in Quebec.
The ABC initially used bowling balls made of lignum vitae hardwood from the Caribbean. These were eventually supplanted by the "Evertrue" rubber ball, and by the Brunswick "Mineralite" rubber ball in 1905. (clipping of article) Other sources are apparently wrong in citing 1914. Columbia Industries, founded in 1960, was the first manufacturer to produce polyester resin ("plastic") in bowling balls. In 1980, urethane-shell bowling balls were introduced by Ebonite.
Rules for target bowling evolved separately in each country which adopted the predominantly-British game. In 1905, the International Bowling Board was formed. Its constitution adopted the rules of the Scottish Bowling Association, with variations allowed at the national level. The Victorian Ladies' Bowling Association, founded in Melbourne in September 1907, was the world's first women's lawn-bowling association. The oldest surviving tenpin bowling alley opened in 1908 in the basement of Milwaukee's Holler House tavern, with the country's oldest sanctioned lanes. Europe's first tenpin bowling alley was installed in Sweden the following year, but the game failed to catch on in the rest of the continent until after World War II. Tenpin bowling became popular in Great Britain after hundreds of bowling lanes were installed on U.S. military bases during World War II.
The monthly Bowlers Journal was founded in Chicago in 1913, and is still in existence. In late 1916, The Women's International Bowling Congress (originally the Woman's National Bowling Association) was founded in St. Louis in late 1916, and merged with the United States Bowling Congress in 2005. Prohibition in the U.S. forced bowling alleys to disassociate from saloons, turning bowling into a family game and encouraging female bowlers.
The annual Petersen Open Bowling Tournament (also known as the Pete), first held in Chicago on 2 October 1921, became bowling's richest tournament. In 1998, it was taken over by AMF. The International Bowling Association (IBA) was formed in 1926 by the United States, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, and held four world championships by 1936. The National Bowling Writers Association, founded in Peoria, Illinois, by four bowling journalists on 21 March 1934, changed its name to the Bowling Writers Association of America in 1953.