The History Of Paintball

Haven't you ever wished you could stalk and take down your friends in a game that tests your raw animal instincts... and get away with it without seriously damaging each other? Well in the not so distant past that's exactly what a group of guys decided they wanted to do, and from their first strategy sessions the sport of paintball was born. This article will take a look at the history and progression of the game, which began in the seventies and really took off in the early eighties. So let's see how it all went down...

Who Made Them? And Why?

Paintballs were initially used for something far less exciting. They were first used in the forestry and cattle industry as a way to mark trees (in the construction of trails and research) as well as cattle from a distance. First made from wax, the earliest paintball prototypes were not durable enough, and producers switched to soft-gel encapsulation in order to prevent the paintballs from exploding before they impacted their intended target - in the past that target may have been a cow, nowadays it's an unsuspecting enemy paintballer.

The company that first produced paintballs was the Nelson Paint Company, which also produced the first ever paintball gun, the Nelspot 007 marker. After finding it in an agricultural catalogue, this marker was then used by the men who invented the game of paintball, who turned the marker into a weapon of sport

Developing the Sport

So who's behind the development of the sport we've all come to know and love? Well there are four men are specifically credited with creating the sport of paintball, however it's also likely that farm-hands and forestry workers may have had a little fun on the job too. In any case, the actual creation of the game happened in 1976, when friends Hayes Noel (a stock trader), Bob Gurnsey, Mark Chapin (a S.W.A.T officer), and Alex Rieger (a Green Beret) got together to recreate the "thrill of the hunt" that they got from hunting, but with a more interesting prey: themselves. For months after they first came up with the idea to hunt each other for sport as opposed to game, they had trouble thinking of how they could go about testing their raw instincts. They eventually came across the Nelspot 007 in an agricultural catalogue and decided that it would be a safe and exhilarating weapon to use in their proposed man-hunt.

That First Game!

The first game of paintball took place on June 27th, 1981 between 12 players using the Nelspot 007. They based their first game on a capture-the-flag scenario game, and used similar rules, but called the game "Survival." The game took place between a Sports Illustrated writer (who later wrote an article about the first game), along with an array of others including stock brokers, farmers, hunters and even a surgeon. From this first game, paintball exploded onto the alternative sports scene.

Paintball Catches On...

After writer Bob Jones published a story on paintball in Sports Illustrated, people all over the country became interested in playing paintball, so soon afterwards paintball co-creator Bob Gurnsey formed a paintball supply company: "National Survival Game" and enlisted the help of the Nelson Paint Company to distribute their new sports equipment.

Although they started off with a monopoly on the market (turning a profit in about six months or so), rival manufacturers popped up within a couple of years. Today there are 100's of companies producing a variety of paintball equipment, and brands like Spyder and Tippman constantly improve paintball technologies and safety measures, creating an ever-widening market.

So there you have it folks, a brief history of paintball as you now know it, and with over 14 million people playing the game annually, there will undoubtedly be more history to come. But the question remains... will you be apart of that history?

About The Author

Niko Brain is a freelance writer and offers sound advice on the sport of Paintball. He runs his own personal paintball site and enjoys writing reviews on Paintball Markers, Paintball Equipment, Tippmann Paintball Guns and Spyder Paintball Guns. He's your "average Joe" paintball player and is an up and coming industry resource that loves to help newcomers to the sport.

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