A bit of the history of carom billiards
This page completes the tour of carom billiards' disciplines: where the game comes from, and how the rules played today took shape over time.
Carom billiards descends from an outdoor game played in the Middle Ages with mallets and wooden balls, known under several regional names. It is thought to have moved indoors, onto a table, around the 15th century; balls were then pushed with curved sticks, ancestors of today's cue.
| Milestone | Event |
|---|---|
| 15th century | The game moves from outdoors to an indoor table. |
| 1674 | Earliest known engraving showing a six-pocket table. |
| 1770 | A third ball (the red) is added, making three-ball caroms possible. |
| 1807 | First written, formalized rules. |
| 1823 | The leather tip appears at the end of the cue — before that, the ball was pushed or struck with a flat mace. |
| 1835 | Slate replaces wood as the playing surface, for lasting flatness. |
| 1868 | Celluloid replaces ivory in ball manufacturing. |
| Around 1875 | Split in styles: the English version focuses on pocketing and gives rise to snooker; the French version stays pocket-free, centred on the carom. |
| 1880s | A scoring technique discovered in the United States lets players run up points almost endlessly in straight rail; balkline is created to contain it. |
Three-cushion then established itself as the most demanding discipline in carom billiards — which is why this site devotes two calculation methods to it rather than a single universal system.
These milestones come from several public sources on the history of billiards, cross-checked against each other; the oldest dates sometimes rest on reported tradition rather than a surviving period document, and should be taken as landmarks, not absolute certainties.
The great champions
Section coming soon: the players who have marked the history of carom billiards, and what they changed in its rules or its practice.