The History
About 1560, William Kew, a
pawnbroker, was fond, so it has been claimed, of taking down the
three balls which identified his profession and pushing them
about with a yardstick on his countertop or even the floor. Hence
Bill-yard. And the stick, of course, became known as kew and
hence cue. The evidence suggests that "billiard" is a
word descended from "ball" words like pila (Latin) -
billa medieval Latin) - bille (French) and "stick" words
like bille (old French) - billette (French) - billart (old French).
"Cue" comes from "queue" the French word for
tail, which refers to the early practice of striking the ball
with the "tail" or small end of mace when the ball was
under a cushion
The demand for tables and
equipment was first met by furniture makers, carpenters and the
like but some of these, like John Thurston went over entirely to
this specialist new trade
The very earliest balls
has been made of wood, but ivory was preferred by the rich, who
could afford them, and came to be accepted. However, later the
expense of ivory balls made a synthetic substitute necessary. In
1868, J. W. Hyatt, a New York inventor, discovered that collodian
which painters brushed on their fingers to protect them from
cuts, hardened when it dried and could be made into balls. Hyatt
and his brother patented their process in 1870 under the trade
name of celluloid, the world's first commercial synthetic
plastic. Among the teething problems of the new ball was that
celluloid was highly flammable and, if struck too hard, a ball
could explode! Nevertheless this initial discovery led directly
to the cast resin and cast phenolic balls which were used later