In the beginning the object balls were made of stone. The thought of stone billiard balls may bring back memories of Fred Flintstone. Remember when Fred would strike a rock on the stone billiard table and it would rumble and chip its way toward the pocket? Well, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration on the early versions of billiards, mainly because when billiards first moved indoors from its croquet like ancestor, the “balls” were pushed on the table with the use of a mace, and not struck like they are today. Rocks were as good a substance as any when the game was played the old-fashioned way — almost like shuffleboard.

From Bedrock to Modern Times

As the game progressed from pushing to striking, stone would no longer do the trick. Wood became the new substance of choice in the making of the object balls. With some carving, shaping, and sanding, wooden balls were lighter than their predecessors and rolled quite easily on the table, which changed the game forever. But wood is subject to temperature changes and warps easily when moist, so it was not going to be the medium of choice for very long. Billiards would soon move on to find more permanent materials.

Clay was another substance that was used, but clay was not durable enough and was subject to chipping and cracking, taking the balls “out of round.”

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wood faded away and ivory became the most popular substance for many products, including billiard balls. Unfortunately thousands of elephants were slaughtered for their ivory to support the worldwide, and rapidly growing, billiards craze.

Billiards, Plastic, and World War I

Many credit the desire to protect the elephant with the invention of plastic — but that's kind of a chicken or the egg kind of mystery. In the late nineteenth century, billiard companies were so interested in substituting the use of ivory for another substance that they offered a $10,000 prize to anyone who could come up with something new. John Wesley Hyatt invented a substance known as celluloid to replace the ivory used in billiard balls — this was the beginning of the plastic industry. With the invention of plastic, the elephant population would experience a slight reprieve, and the billiards world would finally have a strong long-lasting ball. To this day, the balls are either made of polyester (cheaper quality) or phenolic resin (top quality).

What's the difference between polyester and phenolic resin?

They are both plastics of different molecular structures, but polyester is a more pliable and brittle plastic (not unlike the keys on your computer keyboard), while phenolic resin is fired at a high temperature to make a strong-quality product with a smooth, sleek, and highly polished surface.