Taken from "Manuale Del Bigliardo" , written by Luigi Lamparelli.

".....The billiard player always renews heathen customs: ancient warriors used to take omens - propitious or ominous - from simulacra of rough skittles, brought down, struck by globe-shaped stones, thrown on the green lawn. * The origin of the game of billiards is ancient and uncertain. Personally, I think it dates back to the custom of some barbaric peoples who, before giving battle, used to stand some crooked stones on the ground, as well as they could, and then, from a certain distance, tried to hit and knock them down, using roundish stones. From the number of stones fallen and from the ease with which they hit them, these warriors took omens about the next battle and the number of enemies they would kill. This ancestral conjecture still seems to persist nowadays in the invaluable gratification that you feel on hearing the "clatter" of the skittles falling because the "castle" (namely all the skittles standing in the middle of the billiard-table) is considered to be formed by "enemies" to be knocked down. The satisfaction felt for a well-executed shot also involves this element. Without the knowledge of the player himself, a mechanism involving the subconscious goes into action, taking into account the echoes of ancient deeds carried out by our ancestors struggling for survival.

Certainly billiards is the transposition in-doors of a game formerly played outside, and from this background comes the green of the cloth, which represents the lawn. Old prints show gentlemen of the French Court around a rectangular table (although different in proportions from the current ones), with some little arches placed on it. As tools for the game, small spatulas were used with which, evidently, some balls had to be pushed under the arches, perhaps in a prearranged sequence. In one of Shakespeare's plays, queen Cleopatra plays billiards with her eunuch. According to tradition, the king of France, Louis the 11th, was playing billiards on Saint Bartholomew's Eve, during the slaughter of the Huguenots. A number of experts hold that billiards was invented by a certain Devigne, craftsman at the Court of Louis 11th; according to other experts billiards goes back to a certain Bill, an Englishman this time, nicknamed "Yard" because he was a tailor, and for the fabrics he had to measure. All we can be sure of is that - certainly - nothing is known about this subject that has been historically proved: it is possible, however, that billiards is only the result of an evolution, the result of the successive changes in something already existing. * The lines of the epigraph are by the Author. The game of billiards was at first a prerogative of the aristocratic and well-to-do classes. With the march of time it spread also to the other classes, following the evolution of custom and the growth of society itself.

Even the rules and the "object" of billiards then underwent a transformation adapting themselves to the mentality of different peoples: in Italy the billiard-table with pockets appeared and the game consisted in fact of sending the opponent's ball into one of the six pockets (placed at the four corners and in the middle of the two longer sides) using tools which became more and more perfect, from the "ball-pusher" (a thin stick about 1.20 metres long with a small block of wood at one end, with a hollow which fitted the ball to be pushed) to the actual "cue", still used nowadays. Then the skittles appeared, and the "object" of the game consisted in knocking down the greatest possible number of them using the opponent's ball. This version of the game was called "Italian" because it was in Italy that it asserted itself permanently. But the game of billiards became known worldwide, with different rules, different "objects" and different conditions: from the French carom (their particular version), to the English "snooker", and the American "pool" and, finally, "boccette", played, however, only in Italy and by Italian emigrants outside Italy.

Emigrants also brought with them abroad the features of our "Italian" game, adapting it to the features of the gaming tables installed in the various countries. Where the flow of our emigration was greatest (for example in South America) more widespread was the Italian version, although with slight variations. These days billiards is the only "whole" complete activity"(sport, geometry, pastime, technique, art and mathematics) to spread worldwide, above, beyond and outside any barrier constituted by wealth, status, position, race and language.

The game of billiards, during its diffusion gave origin, as a logical consequence, to the conditions for the birth of federative movements, a natural need of people practising this activity. Therefore the "snooker" Federation came into being in England and later, in the different European countries, National Federations arose, most of them recognized by their respective Olympic Committees or by the major sports establishments of the countries where they are active. In Italy, the federative movement of the billiard force dates back to 1955 and, for practical purposes, became effective in 1958 with the birth of a proper Federation called FIBIS (which in Italian stands for: Italian Federation of Amateur Billiard Players), officially recognised by the ENAL, active at that time.

As far as Italy is concerned, specially in the last twenty years, billiards has remarkably increased its growth, and it is not simply a coincidence if this period corresponds to the phase of activity of the Federation; it is enough to consider that in Italy we have at the moment: § 5,000,000 billiard players § 25,000 card-holding members § 1,600 billiard rooms and sport societies with billiard-tables All of these people are interested in this game/sport at different standards."....