What is Table Tennis?

Table tennis is a sport that involves two or four players. It is played on a table of dimensions
around 2.74 m (9.0 ft) x 1.525 m (5.0 ft) x 76 cm (2.5 ft) following the rules and regulations.

The two other pieces of equipment are a lightweight plastic or celluloid ball of 40 mm diameters
and a flat racket for hitting the ball on the surface of the table.

Table tennis originated in 1880 as an after-dinner game for the upper-class inhabitants of
Victorian England.

At that time, the upper-class people of England loved to play Lawn Tennis, and in the winter,
due to freezing weather conditions, it was very tough to play lawn tennis outside.

Then the table version of lawn tennis came into the picture. This new game featured a sprung
racket, rubber balls of 30 mm diameter, a table surrounded by a wooden fence along its
perimeter, and an extended net up to the side of the table.

In 1901, the British manufacturer J. Jaques & Son Ltd trademarked the game with the name ping
pong that featured exclusively Jaques’s equipment to play the game.

The same game when played with the equipment of other manufacturers was called table tennis.

In the United States, the Parker Brothers bought the trademark rights from Jaques which came
with the same scenario as in England.

In the same year, James W. Gibb, a British enthusiast discovered the celluloid ping pong ball that
gave the game a new dimension. Another man, G. C. Goode invented the racket with a
combination of a wooden blade and pimpled rubber, where the rubber was pasted on the surface
of the blade.

In the year 1926, ITTF organized the first official table tennis World Championships in London.
This year also witnessed the birth of another table tennis association, i.e. the United States Table
Tennis Association.

In the year, 1950, the introduction of a sponge as an underlying material of the table tennis racket
was a revolution in the game of table tennis. As a result, the combination of sponge and rubber
top increased the amount of spin and speed drastically.

1933- The United States Table Tennis Association was created in 1933.[1] The phrase "Table Tennis"
was created because the name "Ping Pong" had already been trademarked by
1988 is the most remarkable year in the history of table tennis when the game was first
introduced in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul with men’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s
singles, and woman’s doubles. China and South Korea won two titles each.

In the year 2000, ITTF took a major step in view of the popularity of table tennis. They increased
the ball diameter from 38 mm to 40 mm. The larger ball tends to be slower and spins less which
brings more excitement to the game.

In 2001 the development came up with a total change of scoring in table tennis, from 21 points to
11 points. ITTF changed the scoring pattern with a game of 11 points from 21 points. Also, the
consecutive serve for each player was brought down to 2 serves from 5 serve in a row.

In 2014, we witnessed the last modification, when ITTF introduced plastic as a material for table
tennis balls.