Billiard Balls: A History of Constant Evolution

The game of pool has been around since the late 1600's and of course billiard balls have been as well. Believe it or not, the first ones made out of wood. But as one might imagine, those were very difficult to carve into perfect spheres of exact dimensions and they would break and degrade really fast due to repeated contact with other balls. Clay was another common material used to make billiard balls and it actually stuck well into the 20th century. The short durability of these balls due to their degradation, both chipping and their paint peeling off easily, made people look for stronger, more robust materials to use. As early as 1588, ivory balls were starting to be used.
Ivory Balls
Ivory is a very solid material and was extremely useful for the purpose of making quality billiard balls. Unfortunately, the natural resource being elephants' tusks, the supply was fairly limited. A mere eight quality billiard balls could be manufactured out of a single elephant's tusk. By the 1950's, elephants being slaughtered for their ivory, their survival was endangered and scientists were urged to find an alternative material to manufacture quality balls without putting any species in danger. A 10 000$ prize was even offered by a New York supplier to anyone who could come up with a valuable substitute. There is no evidence that the prize was actually ever won by anyone.
Synthetic Materials
In 1869, John Wesley Hyatt invented an artificial substance called nitrocellulose. That material first seemed perfect for the use of making billiard ball, if it wasn't for that one problem: its nature making it volatile in production, it would occasionally explode during the fabrication. An urban legend even says that the balls themselves would sometimes explode during rough play; although no reliable sources ever proved that occurrence. Building on that knowledge, the industry continued experimenting with diverse synthetic materials and plastic compounds to finally come up with a perfect plastic material that is resistant to cracking and chipping.
Nowadays, Phenolic resin balls are manufactured by companies such as Aramith and Brunswick Centennial. Competing companies such as Elephant Balls Ltd. and Frenzy Sports use other plastic resins like polyester and clear acrylic to produce their billiard balls.
It's incredible to think of how far the evolution of billiard balls has come since the very beginning of their history. From wooden, as round as possible, hand-made balls, they became a regular supply that nobody even reflect about when buying pool tables. Billiard balls are now just a part of the game and are as reliable as anything one can think of.

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