History
Slazenger was founded in 1881 by Ralph Slazenger, four years after the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club held its first ever championships, Slazengers produced 'The New Game of Lawn Tennis' complete in a box.
Slazengers were one of the dominant (wooden) racquet manufacturers in the world of their time. Over the years they produced such a wide variety of sports equipment from tennis racquets to clothing from golf equipment to rifles. But it was their bold move into tennis ball manufacturing late in the 1800s that arguably saw their greatest business achievement. Their plant in Barnsley manufactured tennis balls and exported them round the world.
In 1877 the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club revised the rules of the game and decided on a pneumatic and cloth covered ball (the first rules of 1875 had only stipulated "that the balls be hollow and made of India rubber ... balls covered in white cloth shall be used in fine weather").
In 1902 Slazengers were appointed as the official tennis ball supplier to The Championships, Wimbledon and, with the current deal set to run until 2015, it remains one of the longest unbroken sporting sponsorships in history. In 1877 there were 22 entries and 180 tennis balls were used, at the 1939 Championships there were 531 entries and 8,352 Slazenger Lawn Tennis Balls were used, by 2005 there were 668 entries and a staggering 52,000 Slazenger Lawn Tennis Balls were used.
During Queen Victoria's reign three manufacturing firms were founded in the 1870s and 1880s by Albert Slazenger and Ralph Slazenger, William Sykes and Harry Gradidge each originally manufacturing for the increasingly popular pastimes of the day – lawn tennis, football (soccer) and cricket.
Some 50 years or so earlier, the forerunner to them all had been established, The House of Ayres. This company had begun life in 1810 by Edward Ayres, five years before the Battle of Waterloo. First established in Clerkenwell, England initially as a cabinet maker and wood turner for the production of indoor games only he soon developed a wider range of outdoor sporting goods as well.
Read more about this topic: Ralph Slazenger
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)