Crokinole

The history and background of the game of crokinole.

The earliest known crokinole board (with legitimate, dated provenance) was made in 1876 in Perth County, Ontario, Canada. Several other home-made boards of southwestern Ontario origin, and dating from the 1870s, have been discovered within the past 10 years, suggesting confirmation of this locale as the probable 'cradle' of crokinole's birth. Earlier Canadian written sources detail the game from the mid-1860's. Several years after that time, a registered American patent suggests 1880 as the time when commercial fabrication began - first in New York, then Pennsylvania. The games that no doubt contributed to the arrival of crokinole seem to be the 16th century British games of shovel board-from which modern-day shuffleboard descends, the17th century pub game shove ha'penny, and the Victorian parlour game of squails that appeared in England during the second quarter of the 19th century. In addition, Burmese or East Indian carrom (developed during the 1820s) seems a logical ancestor of crokinole due alone to the very similar shooting or fillip technique involved. And while a German game known as 'knipps-brat' (various spellings in high and low Germanic dialect exist) may have had similar features, game historians agree the aforementioned British and Asian predecessors seem the most likely links to modern-day crokinole. Many wonderful works on the history of games have been written in the past two decades. From Egyptian pyramid motifs and archeological digs to medieval findings, the pattern of 'put-it-in-the-hole' games has a remarkable social history. Think about golf, ice curling, marble games, darts, carrom, hockey, soccer-so many games that require putting the shooter object in a hole, goal, or target area.