Home  History of Darts
|
|
History of Darts |
|
|
Written by DartTutor
|
An early version of Darts called Puff and Dart used a blowpipe to fire
a dart at the target. In 1844, during a game of Puff and Dart at a
London pub, a player made the unfortunate mistake of sucking rather
than blowing. The dart disappeared into his digestive system whereupon
the poor chap died a few days later.
Early forms of Darts started to grown in popularity in the 19th Century
but it didn't become a serious pub game until the 20th century when it
was known as Dart and Target according to 'Lawful Games on Licensed
Premises', 1904. Dart and Target was played on a board of numbered
colored circles, on which doubles and trebles did not feature, the
highest score being the Bull’s-eye and lowest at the edge. Brewers
started to organize leagues from around 1925. It received a big boost
in 1937, when the King and Queen toured a social club in Slough,
Berkshire and casually threw darts at a dartboard. The Sunday Chronicle
reported that "the Queen has made the women of Britain
darts-conscious." According to the Mass-Observation researchers who
studied pub life in Bolton during the 1930's the number of Dart playing
pubs trebled over the next two years where it seemed to replace Quoits
as the game of choice. Like other games, however, Darts suffered from
laws prohibiting it in places such as Liverpool and Glasgow.
Although the standard or trebles or "London" board pictured is the
primary darts board in use today, many different designs have existed
over the years and non-London variants are still around. Still
known to be used are the Yorkshire board, the Lancashire or Manchester
board, the Staffordshire Board and East End Darts is also still popular
being played on a boards with segments scoring multiples of
five. A Mr. Yates wrote in to confirm that the areas of
Abbey Hey, Clayton and Beswic in East Manchester have a lot of pubs
that still use the traditional Manchester /Lancashire board (or log
end) board.
The London board's segmented numbering scheme is inherited from the old
Yorkshire, Burton, Irish and Lincoln boards which have a similar
arrangement. The origin of the strange numbering scheme
that is common to many of the boards is lost in history but it appears
that the distinctive arrangement of the numbers was invented sometime
in the late 19th century, probably in the North of England. It isn't
known why the numbers are placed as they are but it is clear that some
effort has been taken to ensure that consecutive numbers are mostly
placed well away from each other.
The only picture that exists of any dartboard prior to 1920 is a
picture of the Grimsby board from around 1890. The numbers go
from 1 to 28, there's a single bull’s-eye and no trebles. The
board is big and black but the numbering follows the same rather
pattern of high numbers adjacent to low numbers around the edge.
Today, Darts is played by 6 million people regularly and features on Satellite TV.
|
|
|
Joomstats Counter (Module)
| Visits yesterday: |
0 |
| Visits today: |
0 |
| Visits month: |
0 |
| Visits total: |
0 |
| Maximum visits a day: |
0 |
| Maximum visits a month: |
0 |
| Sites visited today: |
0 |
| Bots today: |
0 |
|
