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http://www.ittf.com/museum/TTC75.pdf

Not sure if this was posted before. I stumbled on the above recently. Lots of historical stuff. I didn't know the discovery and use of sponge in the 1950's caused controversy.

Oh gee, this is great stuff. I had absolutely no idea the game we play MIGHT have been called "Ding Dong" if the Parker Brothers version didn't become dominant!

No, it really does tell the story about sponge in great detail. I'd read, many years ago, about how Satoh (who was supposedly the weakest player in the Japanese team) won the WC in 1952, punching holes through the defensive game that was dominant at the time. And how many others had actually used sponge before that, and how, in 1959, ITTF standardized on the current forms of racket covering (hard rubber, sandwich and inverted sandwich), and how there was an arms race between 1952 and 1959 where all sorts of weird surfaces were tried before ITTF put an end to the madness. I even found web sites with photos of these bats, but this is a great document that tells the story in detail. Wow.. boycotts, bans, spin-off associations.. Table tennis has always been contentious when it comes to equipment, it was so back then and it is so today (just look at the stuff posted lambasting ITTF and all the conspiracy theories floating around on this forum).

Sponge back then wasn't the same as sponge today. Satoh's bat had very thick (5/16" or so) yellow sponge, which was bare, and looked much like a modern Japanese Penhold bat. A member of this forum actually owns one (I've seen a photo posted). Interesting that Armstrong (they're still around) supplied Satoh's racket, and VERY interesting that sandwich and inverted sandwich didn't just appear out of nowhere in 1959 - these were being used quite a bit in Japan prior to 1959, and were used by a couple of Japanese world champions before the rules change.

Iskandar

What a great document! Thanks for posting.

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great read, I saw the same article on the TTNZ website, you can go back and read older issues of this magazine

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Thanks "Arcturus" for finding & posting this fantastic historical document with incredible pictures & information of our great sport.

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Wow, great edition!

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This account of the "bare sponge era" confirms something I read in Marty Reisman's book. Apparently thick bare sponge was more of a blocking weapon than an attacking one. Marty fared badly against Satoh in the WC because he was an attacking player, and Satoh blocked everything back so quickly he couldn't react in time. During the rematch in Japan some months later, Marty decided NOT to attack, but to push, and then suddenly pick-hit a loose ball. So Satoh did the only thing he could do under the circumstances - he attacked. So the game devolved into Satoh attacking and Reisman playing chop defense. Reisman won in the end, but it the score was quite close.

Iskandar

Hey guys, greetings! Glad you found it interesting as I did. I find it fascinating this history is recorded by people who spent a lot of time and effort to gather so much historical bits and pieces and put it into one very interesting historical article. They say time can affect how we see things when we look back. I wonder with the passage of time, how those who were involved feel about it now if the are still alive.

Incidentally, here's where to find more:

http://www.ittf.com/museum/

LOTS of stuff here - photos, more articles, etc. Quite a few photos of those thick sponge bats.

Photos:

http://www.ittf.com/museum/indextech2.html

Check out the old Butterfly bats. I remember these from the 1970s catalogs - I owned a Swedish Style at one time. Before the current "Italian style" laminated handles there were lots of highly varnished handles with someone's picture applied to it. I remembered Stiga made bats like that but I forgot that Butterfly did as well.

Iskandar

Interesting:



"Seams cannot be struck at right angles"???? Did the balls fly apart if you did???

Iskandar

Seems more likely Reismann was the victim of the first world-class topspin counters, vs the flatter trajectory of a hardbat block he was used to.

I don't think anyone really blocked with hardbat - the usual thing to do would be to counterdrive or step back and chop. The sponge gave the ability to produce a fast ball with a simple block. It wasn't spin - it was the return ball going past him before he could recover from the shot.

Iskandar

Sponge absorbs energy and can only make rackets slower; a simple bounce test will verify this. The extra speed often attributed to it comes from the better grip it allows and therefore the great margin of error in spin-generating shots where the extra speed comes from the player's stroke.

Ie. the return might well be faster, because the sponge allowed Satoh to impact the ball harder without missing. It wouldn't come as a shock if Reismann never figured this out.

I'm inclined to agree.

It may be a stretch (I'm new to TT and certainly never really paid attention to the hardbat era), but it seems that the hardbat era was largely about placement, while the modern era is a mixture of speed and spin (and placement as well, of course, but less so than before).

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Would you then assert that thin sponge is faster than thick sponge? I think a lot of choppers on this forum would beg to disagree.



Satoh was blocking (i.e. putting the bat in the way of the ball), not driving.

I suggest you go read the book. Any good public library in a sizeable city should have it.

Iskandar