The Honourable Ivor Montagu, whose name will be seen to feature very prominently in this 'history', suggested that table tennis is "not so much a derivative of lawn tennis as a collateral, born of the common parent, real or royal tennis, at about the same date." But he quoted no evidence for this claim and it must be regarded as suspect.

What other possibilities are there? Lawn tennis was designed, as its name suggests, as an outdoor game, and it was therefore very much subject to the vagaries of English weather. Today we somehow have the impression, perhaps from contemporary illustrations of the garden scene, that the sun always shone during Victorian summers. But no doubt there was sometimes a dash for cover and how then did the frustrated lawn tennis players amuse themselves?

Commonsense suggests - and one day, perhaps, it will be proved from private correspondence - that on such an occasion impromptu games of tennis were played on a table, that is table tennis. This is certainly the earliest title for the game, not ping-pong as so commonly supposed. Materials for play were readily to hand as all English households of any note, and certainly all those with a lawn tennis court, had a dining-room and a large dining-table. Such accessories as rackets and a net could be conveniently improvisad and a child's small rubber ball was most suitable for batting to and fro. In America during the late 19th century, it is reported by Comelius G. Schaad in his book A Manual of Ping-Pong (1928) that an indoor game based on lawn tennis was played with knitted balls so that damage to furniture was avoided.

Perhaps we should allow five years from the first Wimbledon lawn tennis championships before this would come about. That takes us to 1882 or thereabouts. Clearly we can never establish with any certainty when some informal version of the game was first played and there is also the question of definition. A hand-coloured lithograph of about 1810 which shows how school truants amused themselves in those days has a series of satirical scenes, one of which comprises some children playing with a bat and ball on a rectangular piano top. No net is shown. Can this be regarded as a rudimentary version of table tennis?

Table tennis might, of course, have been invented in another country. Andrea Franzoni, an Italian, said in his Storia degli Sport, 1936, that the game was played - as a mere pastime - among Japanese nobility several centuries ago. But the Japanese do not seem to make this claim, and it is almost certainly a confusion with the ancient game of battledore and shuttlecock which, however, does not employ a table, a ball or a net. Moreover, Almqvist and Wiksell in their Sporten, Sweden, 1967, Bernard Le Roy in his Dictionnaire des Sports, France, 1973, and Salvat in his Enciclopedia de los Deportes, Spain, 1976, all support the idea of English origin.

Between 1901 and 1902 about fifteen books on the game were published in England and the United States. Surprising as it may seem, no evidence has yet been found of any publications in other countries during this period. Copies of most of these have now been traced - either in the US Library of Congress or in private collections. Unfortunately, the copies held by the British Museum Library (now the British Library) were destroyed by bombs during the Second World War. Several of these books have a section on the origins of the game but the authors are lookíng back over twenty years or so and their references are often vague, speculative or based on hearsay.

'Gossima' was certainly registered (number 157615) on 16th July 1891, but not a single set seems to have survived and it must be doubted whether sets were ever put into production

under this title. There is no mention of the game in Cassell's Book of Sports and Pastimes, 1893. Sets with the title ´Gossima or Ping-Pong', dating perhaps from the late 1890s, are known. A little later this was reduced to 'Ping-Pong', suggesting - by onomatopoeia the 'ping' on the table and the 'pong' on the hollow vellum battledore. 'Gossima' presumably derived from 'gossamer', a garden cobweb, and intended to convey the notion of 'lightness' associated with the game, was recognised by Jaques as unsatisfactory.

Also in 1902 M.J.G. Ritchie and Walter Harrison published their Table Tennis and How to Play It. Ritchie, winner of lawn tennis championships in France, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria and runner-up in the Wimbledon Championships, took up the new game and was elected secretary of the All- England Table Tennis and International Games Club. His coauthor was secretary of the first club ever formed - the Cavendish - with its meeting-place at Armfield's Hotel, Finsbury, London. T'he authors, in a chapter 'The History of the Game' confirm that "for its conception and origin we must undoubtedly look to the sister game, lawn tennis. Table tennis exhibits nearly all the characteristics of the latter, and it is practically its replica in miniature." One of the authors had met an individual (not named) who had played the game, under the title of table tennis, about 1890, the implements being a table, net, book covers for rackets and a cork ball. Mr. R. S. Jones of St.John's College, Cambridge, and Leslie Jones were enthusiastic players and could probably be classed amongstthe inventors of the original game.

Wooden rackets (to use the more modern spelling) were soon adopted and rubber balls, but, as is well-known from other early references, these proved far too lively in a confined space and caused too much damage in the cluttered Victorian dining-room.

Also, compared to lawn tennis, the game lacked athleticism. For these reasons table tennis fell into obscurity until about 1900.