By Jim Parker
The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? …Simply because that’s the gauge originally used in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. The English built them to that size because the first rail lines were built by the same people that designed and built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used. That particular gauge was used at that time because the people that built the tramways used the same jigs and tools used for building their wagons that also used the same wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? If they attempted to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, due to the spacing of their existing wheel ruts. Who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome, and the roads have been used ever since. Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts and since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. In fear of destroying their wagon wheels, over the centuries, following civilizations continued building their wagons to match the initial ruts.
Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Imperial Roman war chariots that I would like to point out, were themselves originally designed to be just wide enough to accommodate the backside of their two warhorses. Thus, we now have the answer to our original question.
Now for the extraterrestrial twist to my story. ... When viewing a space shuttle setting on its launching pad, notice there are two huge booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are called, solid rocket boosters (SRB’s).
The SRB’s themselves are manufactured by the Thiokol Corporation at their factory located in Utah. The engineers that designed the SRB’s might have preferred to build them a bit wider, but these booster rockets have to be shipped by rail from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line connecting the factory to the launch site runs through a tunnel in the Rocky Mountains.
The booster rockets naturally have to fit through that tunnel, a tunnel designed and built by specifications allowing clearances slightly wider than the railroad track itself. A track as I pointed out earlier, about the width of an Imperial Roman war chariot, that was itself originally designed to accommodate the size of the buttocks of its two warhorses.
Therefore, as strange and unbelievably odd as all of this might seem, we of humankind have come to learn and except one documented fact. The major design feature of arguably the most advanced transportation system in the world as we know it today was predetermined over two thousand years ago, by specifications designed originally ... to accommodate the width of a horse’s rump!
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Now, with that thought in mind, the rest of my story ...
Specifications, like the grossly mismanaged marketing of billiards, seems to live forever ...
While I’m reasonably certain there were earlier attempts to promote billiards in America by means of public notice, my oldest documentation of that fact is a newspaper article from the New York Morning Herald published in 1839 ... six years before John Brunswick, a Swiss immigrant and woodworker, began building and selling billiard tables.
On October 3rd, the Morning Herald featured two ads promoting two of New York’s separately owned and operated billiard emporiums. The first promotional ad began by stating: “Reading and Billiard Room ... Exercise and Amusement,” the ad went on to give the rooms location; “over Stoneall’s Coffee House, and under Fuller’s Gymnasium.” The second ad began
with: “Bassford’s Billiard & Chess Rooms, entrance 1.75 Ann street, and joins the Museum, 218 Broadway.” The museum sited in the article would have been owned and operated by the great 19th century American showman and promoter Mr. Phineas T. Barnum. At the time, Barnum’s museum was located next to Bassford’s on the corner of Ann Street and Broadway. If billiards had the good fortune of attracting the sincere interest of Phineas T. Barnum himself, today in all probability, Tiger Woods recent seven-time sudden-death play-off for the title, would have been on a billiard table, not a golf course! But so much for billiards misfortune, and frankly, that was a minor loss in contrast to what this industry availed itself to in its later years.
In the 1830’s, public billiard rooms in America had seen little conceptional change from when billiards was first made available to the public in France nearly a century earlier. In 1760, on the streets of Paris ... reading rooms, taverns, cafes and billiard rooms first became licensed for public use by the city’s provost of guilds. As in Paris in the 1760’s, these American facilities of the 1800’s were commonly viewed as places to accommodate the public sociability of men as opposed to both genders.
Without the support of other businesses, products and services, as indicated by the Herald’s 1839 advertisers, the upscale presentation of billiards, then, as today, had with little exception ever been able to stand on its own merit, and seldom considered a viable source of income or sound business venture by the majority of successful entrepreneurs. To attract public interest and generate income, billiards had to rely on other businesses that included saloons, chess rooms, reading rooms, coffee houses and even gymnasiums. Incidentally, don’t think for one minute that billiards was a thriving enterprise just because of its 19th century existence, it wasn't. Similar to billiards of today, the game required astute marketing and a constant vigilance on behalf of its investors, especially when protecting their patrons from a sub-culture clientele who would pollute an otherwise promising billiard emporium.
Why then, if billiards of various forms has existed some 600 years as historians claim, has this game continually eked out such an existence of national mediocrity, and nearly all forms of its professional side remained frozen in a state of shambles?
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Newsletter . January . 2002
Specifications, like the grossly mismanaged marketing of billiards ... seems to live forever (continued, 2nd entry).
By Jim Parker
For generations, America’s interest in the game of billiards (all cue sports) has clearly been a dichotomy. Aside from limited trends and surges of popularity brought about by others outside of the billiard industry (primarily motion picture studios) the fashionable public side of the game has never been able to fully recover from it’s national collapse and near fatal heart attack that occurred in the 1950’s. Of the long list of various reasons leading to the perpetuating failure to produce and maintain an upscale public side of the game itself, nothing has been more damaging to billiards growth than its own business design and methods used when presented to the public.
Specifically, billiards fails to encourage and develop new and younger recruits, due primarily to lack of adequate upscale public facilities and dedicated interest on behalf of what appears to be industry concern and or ability (which I will explain later). Billiards success, longevity and its more stylish existence had most always been the result of its private sector and not public facilities. Public facilities are best identified as servicing billiards quantities, not its qualities.
Due to the uncountable years of poor presentation to the public, society’s conception of billiards illustrious history within the private sector of society is often distorted or unknown. Billiards originally emerged from various forms of table games introduced and enjoyed by the most fashionable side of society. In foreign cultures, this is best displayed by French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s 1807 painting, “The Billiard Party.” Recovered after its theft by Adolph Hitler’s counterparts during his reign of nazi tyranny, this magnificent painting provides pictorial documentation of an elegant 18th century family billiard party, hosted in the grandeur of the artist’s country estate (a huge reproduction is on display in Bonnie’s 19th century dining room).
In American culture, examples of this fact can also be traced back to the 1800’s, and seen within the homes and stylish billiard room decors of thousands of the wealthiest families in the land. As our nation grew, so did the demand for billiards in the homes of millions of middle-class Americans whose financial income was growing along with the their interest in bringing billiard tables into their own homes. Today more than ever, it’s the upscale private side of billiards, as even reflected in the current annual sales of billiard tables themselves, that continues to display billiards lavish decors and mans timeless attraction to the games never diminishing challenges.
While Michael Phelan, a 19th century billiard entrepreneur (whose first known 1863 photograph by the Matthew Brady Studio is on display in the IBC’s museum), is rightfully referred to as the father of American billiards, it was the 19th century Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. that was the mother of American billiards. In the 1870’s, the BBCC was largely responsible for the founding of the National Billiard Association of America (NBAA). Even after their closing in the 1930’s, to this date, the NBAA has been the most successful and longest sustaining governing body in the history of American billiards.
From the games infancy, the BBCC and the NBAA through astute business ability and integrity, nurtured and actually raised American billiards. This 19th century BBCC with its NBAA, took a public rag-tag pass-time, and threw out the characters, and brought in character. They gave a back-alley gutter-game a bath, dressed it up, educated it, and introduced it to an affluent public side of society as no one had ever done before, or has ever since. They invested decades of determination and millions of dollars building not only quality billiard equipment, but far beyond.
They hired, trained, and put literally thousands of Americans to work, and turned hopeful immigrants into honest, hard working Americans. When manufacturing billiard equipment, they learned how to put quality and affordability together and soon became a small part of the American dream … when a middle-class family could afford to purchase their very own billiard table. They gave society an honorable game, and they gave all of the games champions an opportunity to achieve fame.
For some 75 years since our nations first recorded public billiard tournament of 1863 (the only known historical photographic documentation of this event and, our nations first governing body of American billiards, is on display at the Illinois Billiard Club), the dominant billiard games in America were various forms of a game referred to as, “carom billiards.”
In American billiards, beginning in 1873, the carom game was and still is, played on 5 x 10 pocket less billiard tables. Scoring in this game is the result of various methods of ball-to-ball contact ... as opposed to today’s game of pocket billiards (pool) with its current method of scoring by putting balls into pockets. Carom billiards, a game best described as billiards chess, with pool its checkers, is still actively played in other parts of the world still interested in billiards art, not it’s academics. Even today, treated like royalty in Monte Carlo, the best carom players in the world are invited (without entrance fees and all expenses paid), to visit and, in the grandeur of the Mediterranean's Metropole Palace, wearing their white shirts, ties and vests, compete for some $100,000 in prizes.
With the changing social climate of the 1920’s and its jazz age, came flappers, flag pole sitters, bathtub-gin and America’s interest in carom-billiards began shifting to pocket-billiards (pool). Not long after Charles Lindbergh's first transatlantic flight in 1927, by comparison of tournament earnings, the pool players were receiving a smaller portion than the carom players. Before the close of the 1930’s, claiming entitlement to larger portions of the NBAA’s tournament funds, the pool players felt short-changed and filed suit against the NBAA. Between the loss of interest in carom-billiards and the added burden of hostility displayed by the pool players, the BBCC simply ceased funding world tournaments and after more than 60 years of service to the industry, retired the NBAA.
The pool players then formed their own organization with a name that took nearly as long to pronounce as the length of its existence, The Professional Pocket Billiards Players Association of America. After an almost immediate collapse of their new PPBPAA, the pool players since have formed dozens of various organizations ... all appearing to have internal problems and netting similar results.
With pool’s increase in popularity beginning in the same decade as Lindbergh’s 1927 flight, and in retrospect to our nations progress in aviation and pools surge in popularity ... today, after humankinds extraterrestrial flights into the heavens and visits to the moon ... while having the necessary fuel, the professional male pool players of America have yet agreed on just how to organize, maintain, and successfully fly ... even their first hot-air balloon.
Moving on to service a seemingly more appreciative, cooperative and promising interests of benefit to society's billiard hobbyists, in the last quarter of the 20th century, the Billiard Congress of America (BCA) began successfully promoting amateur competition along with another notable organization, the American Pool players Association (APA). By servicing amateur team and singles tournaments, together, these two organizations have developed perhaps the largest and most enduring amateur, socially competitive activities in the recorded history of American billiards.
After an almost total absence of their social and much needed professional support for more than two-centuries, in 1976 the women of the world came together to form an organization known as the Women's Professional Billiard Association (WPBA). While to a much lesser degree of global significance and benefit to all humanity, yet nonetheless, pioneering like daughters and granddaughters of some of the most trail blazing women of the 20th century ... from Rome's, Maria Montessori and her battle for primary education, to Rachel Carson, whose Silent Spring first gave nature a voice ... these women of the WPBA, equipped only with billiard cues and driven by their virtues of pride and determination ... gave birth to a new and stylish side of billiards, that for the past 25 years, like mothers nurturing their children, have crusaded across the land promoting a more prominent form of professional American billiards.
Aside from the efforts of America’s WPBA, USBA (America's carom players) and the stylish longevity of Europe’s BWA/UMB carom billiards organizations, the public side of billiards in America has seen little or no progress in the development of a fashionable, professional level of billiards. The games principle roll to the public side of society is a marketing tool or prop, used to encourage sales of unrelated by-products outside of the industry itself, primarily the sales of alcohol and tobacco. All of which for generations has been to a large extent, the reason for billiards unstable and struggling existence.
Today’s public side of billiards is typically supported by a tavern clientele and more stylish varieties of sports bars, while the traditional pool hall, that did little or nothing to boost the qualities of the game, is fast becoming a vestige of Americana. By the very nature of its business design and the sale of alcohol, this current trend, while promoting a healthy form of social activity, offers little or nothing to recruit new and younger players, as did yesterday’s pool halls for other various reasons.
There is one word that can honestly be spoken (and supported by results) for billiards upscale public presentation and preservation, or more precisely, the lack of it ... it’s “consistency.” Of every other game offering such positive and wholesome diversity, in the infinite recorded history of humankind, there has never been one with a history as long and enduring that has “consistently” merely eked out such an existence of national mediocrity, and provided so little for the children of the world, as the public side of billiards.
Tracing the evolution of other games and their various forms of profoundly wholesome competition, history continually proves that champions in most all-major sports begin their training as children. Thus, by their late teens are ready to emerge into their final grooming and preparation for professional competition.
In complete contrast, the public side of American billiards, provides little or nothing of educational substance for children and, further complicates any hope for a child to even begin learning the game, when without legal guardian, shutting them out of public facilities, due primarily to the repeatedly proven counterproductive practices of these very billiard facilities and, all too often, those facilities professing purity as concerned promoters of the game itself. To boost their own self-serving image and popularity, a variety of both past and present organizations and assorted public facilities boasting claims of responsibility to billiards future, have unsuccessfully proclaimed action in this direction for more than the passed 50 years.
If the public side of billiards is ever going to establish itself as more than a saloon or pool hall gaming pastime, the leaders of this billiard industry have to begin doing something unlike they’ve ever successfully done in the past ... think and act with determination beyond the limits of yesterdays ideas and concepts and, step into an arena of genuine professionalism, when through the eyes of society, moving on to produce an industry of professional character ... not unprofessional characters.
When through integrity and social responsibility, this industry can gain the confidence of corporate world trade, that can then in turn, successfully help build and staff upscale public billiard facilities to accommodate the youth of all nations, for the first time in the history of this great land, the game of billiards could evolve into an internationally prominent sport that would forever change its worldly insignificant image, and the future of this profoundly wholesome game.
If up to this point you’ve taken the time to read and understand everything in this thesis in reference to an accurate chain of events that's lead billiards to the 21st century, your now, in all probability more well informed than over 97% of American pool and carom players combined.
Exactly where billiards will be in the next century is uncertain, yet predictable. If I were to project its future, including what I've just discussed, it would be something like this: As recorded in pictorial documentation by French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s 1807 painting of a family billiard party, it’s an almost certainty the private side of billiards will continue its upward fashionable appeal as it has for the past several hundred years. Through the efforts of organizations like the BCA and the APA, with others to follow, the amateur socially competitive side of billiards looks more promising than ever before in the recorded history of American billiards ... and that's not the whole of it.
This division of billiards has every possibility of sometime in the next quarter-century, doubling today's active participation. As a result, a spill-off of accomplished players could occur, that would then complement the rebuilding of the professional side of the game, and further, offer hope of regaining the games lost rating as a sport, as opposed to societies current view of billiards as merely a gaming pass-time. Today’s WPBA, when extending their current program to include working in harmony with amateur organizations, the women's professional side of billiards should also continue it’s most positive an upward trend.
While many of histories professional male carom and pool champions have victoriously won seemingly impossible battles to gain societies respect and attention, their never ending war to build billiards integrity on a national level appears without end of its own internal conflict. However, with the help of the International Billiard Council (another IBC and, one of those new and hopefully promising professional concepts I mentioned earlier) the men's professional side of pool is once again being given another opportunity to redeem itself and boost its popularity.
Playing the role of a professional pool player is an easy one, yet a role too often played with lack of character. Playing this role with personal commitment of honor and integrity is a stunning and Oscar winning masterpiece. Hopefully, in 2002, pocket-billiards will at long last, earn and be presented by society, an abundance of those little gold giants ... yet only time and mans interest in bettering himself and this game will actually write the next chapter of this division of billiards.
As explained earlier, a 19th century billiard table manufacture, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. was the mother of American billiards. With the help of other late 19th century billiard manufactures and their National Billiard Association of America, by their prolific organizational skills, ability to produce quality products and their positive and stylish presentation of American billiards, this body of people successfully invested over 60 years building the integrity of this industry.
Today, there’s a certain irony in all of this, when currently witnessing a 21st century billiard table manufacture, more than a century later, victimizing the games public image and throwing billiards public side back to where it first began and, before its original 19th century organizers gave it social esteem.
Best described as a “sub-culture, side of pool,” has existed ever since humankind first learned how to place a ball on a table, and move it about with a wooden stick. While this side of billiards obvious lack of concern for their own integrity and social respect is their choice, the damage they bestow on the credibility of this industry is inexcusable. What odd form of anomalous logic would bring a billiard table manufacture to such a strange method of marketing their products, by encouraging, along with curiosity seekers, the presence of this sub-culture side of billiards when hosting literally 7 to 9 days of continuous all night pool tournaments?
Some promoters, like a circus side-show, complete with humanities freakish characteristics, oddities and abnormities, as opposed to a legitimate main-event sports function ... would continue kicking this game about for eternity. What percentage of a positive division of society would sit all night in smoked filled hotels watching pool players reenact forms of adolescent pool-hustler tournaments first introduced in the 1960’s ... by a couple of characters, that after losing their business license in one municipality, established another scam operation elsewhere, and again, were later shut down by the IRS, Illinois Bureau of Investigation (IBI) and the State Police.
Can you possibly imagine the profoundly successful and revered American and World Class games and their champions ... like basketball, tennis, football, soccer and golf ... falling to such a negative marketing ploy, by promoting a games dark side? How many parents of our nations future billiard players would bring their children to watch people and pool tournaments that display such an obvious lack of self discipline and social order?
I wouldn't waste time or ink publicizing the names of any businesses that would promote their products by exploiting the integrity of the very industry they represent. However, it wouldn't come as a surprise if the truly accomplished and progressive organizations I mentioned earlier, along with other concerned industrial leaders, were to sometime in the near future, form a corporate alliance and take action (perhaps an ethics committee) and rise up against those expressing such insensitivity to billiards image, and its future.
There’s an enormous amount of people and various billiard related businesses out there, that have for most all of their lives been promoting an upscale side of this game, and have successfully avoided this sub-culture side of billiards and boosting its popularity ... I know, I’m one of those people that's invested millions of dollars and more than half of my adult life elevating this game to a higher social level by promoting billiards upscale characteristics to an appreciative and progressive society.
Perfection and total purity are not of this world, but common sense and basic social values are. When this game was turned over to my generation in the 1950’s, it was in a complete state of collapse. While industrial gross mismanagement is actually what led to billiards failure, the games then custodians, laid blame of its collapse on everything from television to world wars! Nothing was further from the truth.
While none of us can change the past and rewrite billiards all too often negative history, together, we do have the ability to promote and write a much improved script for the games future and prosperity. Today, to safeguard its integrity and support the progressive organizations mentioned earlier, lets give billiards a voice ... lets not make the same mistakes as a past generation. We can help insure the games more stylish future for centuries to come by seriously working together on what could be one of the greatest “clean-up” marketing efforts in the history of American and world billiards. There won’t be any forms to fill out, pledges or vows to be administered or annual dues to be paid.
We all merely avoid supporting activities, tournaments, organizations and products manufactured by those who would continue kicking this game about, and posing risk to its future. To put it simply, if whatever the case, it suggests insensitivity to billiards integrity and prosperity, and not of the highest quality of American social, family and corporate standards ... don’t support it ... or buy it!
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A reproduction of The Illinois Billiard Club’s 1863 original; “Michael Phelan and his Billiard Congress” will be on display in the IBC’s Museum and Private Club beginning September 1, 2001. Public showings are welcome by reservation on Sundays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. ... 708.839.5820 / www.IllinoisBilliardClub.com
An important note to other historians and collectors ... Photography's cyanotype process, introduced in 1842, utilizes ferric (iron) salts as the light-sensitive medium. Once paper is hand coated and dried, it is contact printed with film, exposed to sunlight or artificial light, and developed in water. Though cyanotype prints will fade in direct sunlight they miraculously regain their composure when stored for a few days in a cool, damp and dark place. I strongly suggest before discarding any old photographs that might appear weak in their detail, investigate this possibility. Knowing this might prevent by ignorance, discarding a possible National or even World treasurer!
The Illinois Billiard Club is a private billiard club founded in 1975 for the preservation and promotion of the elegant, historical, professional and social side of billiards. The IBC is not a poolroom, barroom or any other form of public place of amusement. Yet by its design, popularizes the sport of billiards to all positive sides of society.
This Newsletter and all of its contents is copyrighted material and is not to be reproduced without written permission from the Illinois Billiard Club, and its president and founder, Mr. James K. Parker.