The History of Badminton

The game is called after Badminton, which was initially played around 1873 on the
duke of Beaufort's rural home in Gloucestershire, England. The sport has roots in
ancient Greece, China, and India, and it shares many similarities with the classic
kids' games battledore and shuttlecock.
While shuttlecock-using games have been played for ages across Eurasia, the
current game of badminton originated among the British in the middle of the 19th
century as a variation of the older game of battledore and shuttlecock. Its exact
origin is unknown; "battledore" was an earlier word for "racquet". It is unknown
why or when the name came from the Badminton House in Gloucestershire owned
by the Duke of Beaufort. Badminton Battledore - A New Game was issued in 1860
by a toy trader in London by the name of Isaac Spratt, but no copies are known to
have survived. Badminton is described as "battledore and shuttlecock played with
sides, over a string strung about five feet from the ground" in an 1863 article in
The Cornhill Magazine.
Up to 1887, the sport was played in accordance with Pune regulations. The Bath
Badminton Club's H. E. Hart amended the rules. Hart and Bagnel Wild made even
another revision to the laws in 1890. These regulations were released by the
Badminton Association of England (BAE) in 1893, the same year that the sport
was formally introduced in a mansion in Portsmouth named "Dunbar" on
September 13. The All-England Open Badminton Championships for men's
doubles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles were established by the BAE in
1899. An England-Ireland championship match debuted in 1904, while singles
tournaments were introduced in 1900.