Invention Of Tennis

The origins of tennis lie in an 11th-century French game called jeu de paume. This developed into "real" or "royal" tennis, and modern lawn tennis evolved from a variation invented by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield in 1873.

Tennis as we know it evolved from a game first played in the cloistered courtyards of French monasteries c.1050. In England this then developed into "real" tennis, for which special brick-built indoor courts replaced the monastic courtyards. The earliest record of an outdoor version of the game is a reference to field tennis in Sporting Magazine (England) on 29 September 1793, but the modern form of lawn tennis evolved from a game called sphairistike, devised in 1873 as: "A New and Improved Portable Court for Playing the Ancient Game of Tennis."

Wingfield first played sphairistike in 1873 with a group of friends in Wales, and published details of the game in a pamphlet entitled: The Game of Sphairistike: or Lawn Tennis - not surprisingly, it was the alternative name that stuck. The game was played on an hourglass-shaped court, narrower at the center than at the ends, with an 'H'-shaped arrangement of nets forming side walls and a central division. Wingfield's patent states: "By this simple apparatus a portable court is obtained by means of which the old game of tennis, which has always  been an indoor amusement, and which few can enjoy on account of the great expense of building a brick court, may be made an outdoor one, and brought within reach of all."

During 1874 Wingfield advertise his invention in newspaper and began selling boxed sets of the equipment required to play the game. Lawn tennis quickly became popular as an alternative to croquet and another new sport, badminton (first played at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, c.1870). The first official set of rules was drawn up by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at Lord's Cricket Ground in 1875, and the first Lawn Tennis Championship was played in 1877 in Wimbledon at the All-England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, as it was then known, which has administered the game ever since.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison