Origins Air hockey is a game resting on an older technology, the air table. Air tables began as a conveyor technology allowing heavy objects like cardboard boxes to easily slide over a table surface. The original air tables of the 1940s had rather large holes that were plugged by ball bearings. An object sitting on the table would depress the balls, allowing air to escape and lift the object slightly off the table. . This technology formed the basis of later air hockey games. In the early 1960s, physicists began designing and building crude
air tracks for educational purposes.
John Stull, a professor at
Alfred University, created a simple low-friction air track using a vacuum cleaner under a flat surface perforated by small holes. Stull partnered with the Ealing Corporation, which further developed the idea. In 1968,
Sega released an arcade
electro-mechanical game similar to air hockey,
MotoPolo. Based on
polo, two players moved miniature motorbikes around inside a cabinet, with each player attempting to knock the balls into the opponent's goal. By the late 1960s, Ealing developed a tabletop with a sandwich of
fiberboard or
plexiglass sheets separated by a
honeycomb structure. The top surface was drilled with a grid of small holes, and the space between the boards was supplied with low-pressure compressed air, just enough to allow "air pucks" to float over the surface.
Creation Air hockey was created by a group of
Brunswick Billiards employees between 1969 and 1972. In 1969, a trio of Brunswick engineers – Phil Crossman, Bob Kenrick and Brad Baldwin – began work on creating a game using a low-friction surface. The project stagnated for several years until it was revived by
Bob Lemieux, who then focused on implementing an abstracted version of
ice hockey, with a thin disc, two strikers and slit-like goals equipped with
photodetectors. It was then decided that the game might appeal to a larger market and air hockey was marketed and sold to the general public. The original
patents reference Crossman, Kendrick and Lemieux, as well as Ealing's earlier work on air tables. The game was an immediate financial success and by the mid-1970s there was interest in tournament play. As early as 1973, players in
Houston had formed the Houston Air Hockey Association, and soon thereafter, the Texas Air-Hockey Players Association, codifying rules and promoting the sport through local tournaments at Houston pubs Carnabys and Damians, and the
University of Houston.
Competitions The United States Air-Table Hockey Association (USAA) was formed in 1975 by J. Phillip "Phil" Arnold, largely as an official sanctioning body. Since its inception, the USAA has sanctioned at least one national-level or World championship each year, crowning 12 different champions over 30 years. In March 2015, the Air Hockey Players Association (AHPA) was announced and is providing air hockey players with an additional organization also overseeing the sport of air hockey. The two organizations run independently but abide by a similar set of rules and share many of the same players. In July 2015, the AHPA crowned its first world champion and also the youngest in the history of the sport in
Colin Cummings of
Beaumont, Texas. Today, professional air hockey is played by a close-knit community of serious players around the world, Having 4 main scenes in the US:
Houston,
North Carolina,
Chicago and
Boise;
Barcelona in Spain;
Saint Petersburg,
Moscow, and
Novgorod in Russia; and
Most and
Brno in the Czech Republic. In the late 1980s,
Caracas,
Venezuela served as a hotbed of activity; three-time World Champion Jose Mora and other finalists originated from there. By 1999 most of the Venezuelan activity had disappeared. == Air hockey tables ==