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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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table tennis
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(also known as ping pong) Game which began as a pastime in Britain in the mid-19C, using cork or rubber balls and an improvised barrier (such as a row of books) across a table. By the 1880s balls and bats were being manufactured for sale. James Gibb pioneered the use of a celluloid ball in the early 1890s, and he and his partners patented the name Ping-Pong – from the sound of the ball on a table and on a bat of stretched parchment. There was a craze for the game at the turn of the century but it faded away until revived in the 1920s, by then with a pimpled rubber surface to the bat making spin an essential part of the player's skill.
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The name table tennis was officially adopted with the formation in 1926 of the International Table Tennis Federation. In that same year the Swaythling Cup, for national teams of men, was donated by Lady Swaythling, mother of the first president of the ITTF; and in 1933 the equivalent Corbillon Cup for women was given by Marcel Corbillon, president of the French association. Both are now biennial.
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