Billiards

by William Broadfoot

CUSHIONS

No part of the table has undergone such radical changes in the last forty years as the cushion. Billiard-players of even twenty-five years’ experience are already beginning to forget the miseries they endured in the early days in endeavouring to make a respectable shot from under the old high cushions, and a school of billiard-players is rapidly growing up who will never realise the difficulties their fathers encountered.

I am permitted by the courtesy of Messrs. Burroughes & Watts to insert four drawings from ‘Billiards Simplified,’ which show the difference of the stroke from under the cushion—fig. 19 in 1826; fig. 20 in 1837; fig. 21 in 1869; fig. 22 in 1895.

The more the player’s cue is elevated from the horizontal, the more difficult it becomes to direct the course of the ball, and with the old high cushions it was no easy matter for an ordinary player whose ball was tight under the cushion to hit another ball at the length of the table.

But it is not only for the reduction in the height of the cushions that we have to thank the makers at the present time. The early rubber cushions were exceedingly sensitive to cold, and unless the greatest care and trouble were taken with them they became hard, untrue, and useless; and if they were once allowed to get ‘frozen,’ as it was called, they never regained their original elasticity. Five and twenty years ago it was the exception and not the rule to find a country-house table worth playing on; now, thanks to modern improvements, no one need despair of keeping his table in excellent order.

Fig. 19

Fig. 20

Vulcanite specially prepared was at one time recommended for country-house cushions. But although cushions of that material were unaffected by frost, they were slower and deader than ‘native’ rubber cushions, and soon became unpopular. The makers have at last found a way of preparing cushions so that with ordinary care they can be kept true and fast in all weathers, and it is possible, and indeed usual, to play in the country with the same kind of cushions as are used in the leading London clubs.

Fig. 21

The manufacture of these cushions is a delicate piece of work; but one may say generally that the rubber is applied to the backing in thin strips, one ‘pasted’ on the top of another with some liquid preparation of india-rubber similar to, if not the same as, the stuff one uses to mend a hole in wading-stockings.

Fig. 22

For those who wish to go deeper into the subject, a day at the Patent Office Library and a careful study of the various patents obtained by the principal makers with reference to the manufacture of cushions will prove an interesting piece of research, and will place the scientific reader in possession of information which for obvious reasons could not properly be included in the present work.

As we write, rumours of a pneumatic cushion ‘which is to supersede all others’ are widely current in the billiard world; but when one remembers the number of fair-seeming patents that have never got further than the Patent Office Library aforesaid, it would be premature to express any opinion upon the cushions until they have been thoroughly submitted to the two practical tests of time and play.