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Who Invented the Balance Beam

Laurie Gallus Gary Gallus invented the balance beam. The balance beam is an artistic apparatus in gymnasium and also used for performing many gymnastic events. The event as well the apparatus are referred to as a simple term called beam. BB is the English abbreviation of this event.

The balance beam is a long and narrow beam that is raised from the floor area on one leg. This event is performed only be female gymnasts. The components used to create balance beam are manufactured and marketed by several companies. It is used in gymnastics competitions held at international level and must comply with all guidelines and specifications insisted by the International Gymnastics Federation academy.

Balance Beam

Originally surface of the beam was polished and only plain wood was used. But a few years ago, the beams were made of a material that resembled a basket ball. But these types of balance beams were banned soon as they were too slippery. In the beginning of 1980s’, the balance beams were covered with suede and leather. In addition, spring is accommodated to balance the high difficulty tumbling and dancing.

At the initial stage of learning new skills of balance beam, a gymnast works on a low beam set at a shorter distance from ground. The learners may also work on mini beams, practice beams and lines on mat.

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Who Invented Boxing

The history of boxing was first associated with the Egyptians where carvings of fist fighting’s between two people were found of 3rd and 2nd Millenium BC. There was great contribution from the Greeks as well in the field of boxing. There are written evidences about fights between two men. Legends also say that ruler Thesius of the 9th century BC used to organize a form of fighting with hands between two people and the result was declared with the death of one person.

Romans too have a huge history of boxing in their record. Mainly there were two types of boxing- the athletic and gladiatorial. Initially only low class people and criminals used to fight but with growing popularity of the game even rulers and aristocrats too started playing the game. The rules of boxing saw many modifications starting for no rules. Now there are standards that are generally followed for every professional match.

Boxing Who Invented Boxing

Modern boxing presently has two forms known as the amateur boxing and professional boxing. Olympics and commonwealth games follow the rules of amateur boxing. The man difference between amateur boxing and professional boxing is the time and rounds which is much higher in professional bouts.

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Who Invented Bowling

There is always a debate as who and when invented bowling. Many historians have different approaches and thesis to show the origin of this extremely popular modern game. A study states that it was in the Stone Age where the game originally got its origin. Many archeologists have associated the game with the Egyptians.

A British anthropologist, Flinders Petrie, in his study found some extremely interesting facts on the grave of a child. However many deny to believe the fact. Another country where the game is believed to have a possible origin is Germany. It has been argued that priests in Germany used a form of the game in many religious ceremonies. An association with the Germans has been discussed in many contexts.

Bowling Who Invented Bowling

England too is argued by many as the originator of bowling. The western countries have immensely contributed in the development of the game. There have been vast changes on the rules and equipments of Bowling. Many don’t know that bowling acts as an excellent exercise and is great for muscles. It is now a part of many health and sports club in many countries. Te popularity of the game is increased much more in the last two centuries.

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Who Invented Cricket

There is no clear evidence to indicate as to where and when cricket originated. It is believed that the sport has been derived from a very old and simple leisure activity where one player hurls a small object like a rock or ball and the other hits it back with an appropriate club. It is therefore very difficult to trace the roots of cricket back in time as it has evolved way ahead of the club- ball game to be recognized as the sport we know today. However, the earliest reference of cricket found in recorded history can be dated back to 1300 A.D when Prince Edward played a sport called ’Creag’ which is believed to be the early form of cricket. Also, the first reference of the word Cricket is found in a court case of 1598, which mentions a sport called ‘Creckett’ being played by some school boys.

Many historians are of the view that cricket was originally played by the children of the farming community somewhere around the 13th century. Some others believe that the sport was invented by the shepherds who bred their flocks in the vast fields of England.

Who Invented Cricket

By the 1600s cricket was being played in many parts of England such as Kent, Sussex and Surrey by both children and adults. It was also included in most schools as a chief sport. Much later, it gained acceptance in the British aristocratic circle and rose to the stature of England’s national game.

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Who Invented Cycling

Cycling has been around for quite some time and although unverifiable, certain traces of the use of bicycle can be dated back to as early as the 16th century.

The first known model of the cycle was the ’Laufmaschine’ or the ‘Running Machine’ invented by German Baron Karl Drais Von Sauerbronn. Based on an extremely primitive design this steerable bicycle was made only of wood. It was also quite inconvenient for the rider to operate the Laufmaschine as the machine did not have pedals. The rider was required to push his feet against the ground to make it move forward. Sauerbronn’s invention was first launched in Paris on April 6, 1818.A similar invention known as the Celerifere by a French man, Comete Mede de Sivrac had come up in the year 1790.However the celerifere was not steerable like its German counterpart.

Who Invented Cycling

In the decade that followed the invention of the Laufmaschine, many new and improved versions of the bicycle were introduced. A cycle named the ‘Dandy horse’ became a big hit in the 1820s as it had much bigger wheels allowing for a very comfortable ride. A part of it success can also be attributed to the effective marketing techniques employed by its creator.

In the year 1861 father and son duo Pierre and Ernst Michaux introduced the first modern bicycle with pedals and cranks. The bicycle kept evolving steadily to meet the changing needs of its users ever since.

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Who Invented Football

The invention of football dates back thousands of years, and every continent has at least one ancient game that could be described as football, but most have very little to do with each other. Dictionaries describe football as a team game that involves kicking a ball around a field, though some games such as rugby and gridiron are mostly passing games with minimal kicking.

In Asia, the Chinese game of cuju spread from 200 AD to Korea and Japan becoming a popular sport, whilst in Australia, a game invented by aboriginals called marn grock was adopted by white settlers and became one of Australia’s national sports, Australian Rules Football. In Europe a game invented in the Middle East was adopted by Romans and used a pigs head that was kicked into a goal area, and this game was repeatedly reinvented by medieval people throughout Europe.
Walter Camp

Modern football usually refers to soccer or any of the rugby derivatives, so the question of who invented the sport is more difficult since both codes developed separately, in different countries, and at different times. Football from Europe, which in the US is known as soccer is directly descended from the original Roman game, but of course is much more civilized, the ball these days is a rubber bladder filled with air and then covered with either leather or synthetic material.

Football Who Invented Football

The very first football club in the UK has been conclusively dated to 1824 when a Scotsman named John Hope founded a football club in Edinburgh which continued until 1841, whilst the first English football club wasn’t founded until 1857. The rules of association football, the name chosen for the game weren’t written down until the 1860s when a group of English schools finally decided to cooperate so that inter-school games could be played regularly.

American football by comparison seems to originate in older colonial games of football that were imported by the first settlers, and in the American colonies games of ballown were popular long before the first football clubs were established in Britain. New England colleges in the early 1800s, and possibly even earlier used to organize games of ballown at the beginning of the academic year.

The modern game of American football was finally invented in 1880 by Walter Camp, the coach of Yale’s football team. Intercollege football had been played in the US for several years, but under different rules with much larger teams. Walter Camp can rightly be considered the true inventor of modern American football, and in 1951 was posthumously inducted into the first College Football Hall of Fame on the coaching category in recognition of his role.

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Who Invented Basketball

Basketball is unique amongst all the world’s team sports because its history is well known and documented so we know exactly when the rules were first drawn up, we know when the first games were played, we even know where the first teams were formed. Basketball is an American institution that has spread throughout the world to become one of the most popular college, social, and even professional sport.

In the winter of 1891 at the YMCA Training Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, a group of PE instructors were becoming bored with gym and frustrated that they couldn’t be outdoors running or playing football or baseball, so the head of the athletics department, Luther Gulick, asked a young instructor named James Naismith to come up with a new game that could be played indoors and would provide athletic stimulus.

Dr. James Naismith

Taking into account the size of the average gym, Naismith considered an indoor version of football but his students were mostly older men who could easily be hurt so a non-contact sport had to be developed that would also incorporate stretching and skills outside of simply running around the gym. As a child in Canada, Naismith remembered playing a game of knock the duck which involved throwing a stone or small rock at an object to knock it off it’s perch.

Basketball Who Invented Basketball

Adapting this idea, Naismith needed to improve the concept so that something thrown within a gym wouldn’t damage the wooden floor, any windows that might get in the way, and not hurt the players. Throwing a ball into a basket suspended high on the wall seemed to be almost perfect, giving an opportunity for each player to exert themselves, and by grouping players into opposing teams would make the game enjoyable in a competitive way.

Within a couple of weeks, James Naismith had written a set of thirteen rules for a game he called Basket Ball. The baskets were positions ten feet above the ground, and nine players per team were allowed. Deliberate contact with another player were grounds for being asked to leave the court, and players were not allowed to run with the ball, though running on the court wasn’t illegal but the ball needed to be passed from a standing player.

The first time basketball was played at Springfield happened just two weeks after Gulick had instructed Naismith to create a new activity, and was well received by the PE instructors who all took the game back to their own YMCA gyms and within a few years the game was being played throughout the East and didn’t take long to reach the West coast either.

The very first competitive game of college basketball to be played occurred in 1896 when the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago met for an exhibition game. In those times the ball still needed to be retrieved from the net after every goal, so the score of 15-12 in favor of Iowa was considered a good result.

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Who invented Soccer

Soccer, which is also known as football in countries where it is the main team sport, is a game played with two teams of eleven players who kick or pass a round ball using only feet, shins, chests, and foreheads until they are able to score by getting the ball through the opposition’s goal posts. Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and generates billions of dollars of revenue from TV rights, merchandising, ticket sales, and product endorsements.

Kicking a ball around a pitch, with the aim of getting past the other team and score a goal is a common activity in most ancient societies, with the ball varying from filled animal bladders, to pig’s heads, even purpose made balls of leather stuffed with sawdust. The ancient Chinese are believed to have played football first around 2,500 years ago, a game they called cuju and which was also played in Japan and Korea.

History of Soccer

Other indigenous peoples from Africa, the Americas, and even Australia, have had their own versions of football that may be as old as the Chinese game. Australian aboriginals were cut off from the rest of humanity for over 40,000 years, and since they had their own soccer game, historians now believe that soccer is perhaps the first truly instinctive and global game, that in fact nobody invented the first games since they are so common in almost every society.

The game of soccer as we know it today originated in the British Isles during the medieval ages, supposedly from an earlier Roman or Greek game, but the similarities are superficial. In England many attempts were made to regulate or ban soccer which was considered a disruptive and violent game. Tournaments between villages would see players kick a ball several miles through the countryside to score a single goal against the other village, the goal of the defensive players being to prevent the ball even reaching their village.

Old Leather Soccer Ball

By the mid 1500s soccer was being played in British schools, and the first known mention of the game, was published by William Horman in 1519, though it wasn’t until 1581 when the headmaster of Eton College, Richard Mulcaster, wrote about the rules of the game as it was played at Eton. By this time tackling and handling the ball other than with the feet were not permitted, but in other parts of Britain, for example in Scotland, soccer was still a hybrid game that allowed picking up the ball like in rugby or American Football.

The modern game of soccer really started in 1848 when a group of schools and universities in England joined together to write the Cambridge rules under the leadership of Henry de Winton and John Thring. These same rules were updated in 1857, and in 1862 John Thring wrote a simpler set of rules, a combination of his older and newer rules being adopted by the Football Association in 1863. So it seems the inventor of modern soccer is none other than John Thring.

Learn about the complete history of soccer.

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Who invented Baseball

Baseball’s history is fascinating, and a lot of politics is involved, which seems sad for a game that is America’s national pastime and has been for nearly 200 years. Nobody knows who actually invented baseball but a couple of names, Abner Doubleday, and Alexander Cartwright have been linked with the sport.

Alexander Cartwright

Alexander Cartwright

In 1905 Albert Spalding, formerly a star pitcher and the man who created the Spalding sporting goods company organized a commission of former baseball executives and US senators to investigate who invented baseball. The Mills Commission took three years to deliberate and in 1908 published a report claiming Abner Doubleday as the inventor of baseball in Cooperstown in 1839.

Doubleday was a West Point graduate who went to become a decorated war hero of the United States who served in the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, and various Indian Wars. The Mills Commission decided after hearing the testimony of a single witness, Abner Graves, that Doubleday invented baseball, wrote the rules of play, and designed the diamond field on which the game is played.

Sadly this history of baseball has been completely overturned as a hoax perpetuated by Albert Spalding who founded the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and who it is now believed was desperate to create an inventor of baseball who may have lived in Cooperstown, and to ensure that baseball was forever considered an All American game invented in the US.

In fact, Abner Graves shot and killed his wife only a year after testifying and spent the remainder of hi life in a mental institution so has been discredited as a reliable witness. As well, Abner Doubleday isn’t believed to have ever been in Cooperstown, and never mentioned any claim to inventing baseball and isn’t known to have ever played the game.

Baseball Club and Ball

Instead, the truth of the invention of baseball is a much simpler story about Alexander Cartwright and the New York Knickerbockers who used to play rounders in the 1840s, but needed a set of rules that could be used for interclub games. Cartwright and a committee from the club published their rules in 1845 and the very first game played under the new rules took place in 1846 on the 19th June between Cartwright’s Knickbockers and a rival team, the New York Nines.

Alexander Cartwright was a lifelong promoter of the game, who in the 1850s travelled from New York to California introducing baseball to every town he stayed in, and then when he retired from business moved to Hawaii and setup a baseball league in Honolulu which is the direct ancestor of today’s Major League Baseball.

Learn more about the history of baseball.

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