Monday, August 15, 2011

Dart Games Throughout History

By Jerry Smith


Folks enjoy playing dart games. It really is usually such a enjoyable game in the pub! Have you ever thought what the origins of the game are? How did the game develop over time?

The exact origin of the darts game is unclear. It is clear that the game is tied in many ways to traditional archery. Some historians claim that the game began when soldiers threw spears at overturned barrels. Archers were known to practice their skills indoors by throwing arrows at targets instead of shooting them. The boards at which the darts were thrown at had been the bottom of a wine barrel, called a butt, which in French means a target.

You'll find manuscripts concerning the game dated back to the 16th century. At that time, the game was referred to as ‘Puff and Darts’ or ‘Puff the Dart’. The goal of the game was to blow tiny darts by means of a tube or blow pipe aimed at a target several feet away. The contestant that got the highest result out of a given number of puffs won the game. The game was fairly harmful as several accidents happened when players, possibly with the support of alcohol, sucked the darts inside, as opposed to blowing the darts outwards. By the end of the 19th century this type of dart game was seldomly played anymore.

Dart boards had been usually created from blocks of wood but maintaining the wood was time consuming as the blocks had to be soaked following the game in order for the wood to regain its softness and for the holes brought on by the darts to close.

These days dart boards are mainly created from sisal fibers, stuck together and compressed into a round disk held together with a metal ring.

The fantastic benefit of sisal fiber is that when a dart hits a sisal fiber dartboard, it hardly causes any harm to the dart board, resulting in a durable, low maintenance and reusable dartboard.

In contemporary times, darts is regarded as a competitive sports game played by professionals for cash prizes and is nationally televised, but the game is still a classic fun game played all all over the world in pubs and bars.




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