Pool, also known as pocket billiards, is the general term for a family of cue sports played on a pool table with six receptacles called pockets along the rails, into which balls are deposited as the main goal of play…

Cue sports (sometimes spelled cuesports), also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber cushions.

There are many sizes and styles of pool and billiard tables. Generally, tables are rectangles twice as long as they are wide. Most pool tables are known as 7-, 8-, or 9-footers, referring to the length of the table’s long side. Full-size snooker and English billiard tables are 12 feet (3.7 m) long on the longest side. Pool halls tend to have 9-foot (2.7 m) tables and cater to the serious pool player. Pubs will typically use 7-foot (2.1 m) tables which are often coin-operated. Formerly, 10-foot (3 m) tables were common, but such tables are now considered antique collectors items; a few, usually from the late 1800s, can be found in pool halls from time to time. Ten-foot tables remain the standard size for carom billiard games. The slates on modern carom tables are usually heated to stave off moisture and provide a consistent playing surface…

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A billiard table or billiards table (or more specifically a pool table or snooker table) is a bounded table on which billiards-type games (cue sports) are played. In the modern era, all billiards tables, regardless of whether for carom billiards, pool or snooker, provide a flat surface usually made of quarried slate, that is covered with cloth and surrounded by vulcanized rubber cushions, with the whole elevated above the floor. An obsolete term is billiard board, used in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The earliest known billiard table, in the royal court of Louis XI of France (1461–1483), was simply lawn brought indoors and placed on a large, everyday table. Rail-bounded, cloth-covered tables specifically for billiards, with wooden beds rail cushions (made of layered felt, or stuffed with straw[citation needed]), soon evolved as the game’s popularity spread among French and later other European aristocrats.

The increasing demand for tables and other equipment in Europe was initially met by furniture makers of the era, some of whom began to specialize in billiard tables. By 1840, the table beds were made of slate, as they are to this day in quality tables. English table maker John Thurston was instrumental in this change, having tested the surface since 1826. After experimenting with hair, shredded fabric and feathers as stuffing for the cushions, he also introduced rubber cushions in 1835. This was not initially a success, as the elasticity of rubber varies with ambient temperature. After attempting to market cushion warmers with only partial success, Thurston was saved by the 1843 discovery of vulcanization by English engineer Thomas Hancock. Thurston used vulcanized rubber in his later cushions, and it is still used today by many manufacturers (some use synthetic materials). Thurston’s first set was presented to Queen Victoria.

In the United States, manufacture of billiard tables has been ongoing since at least the mid-19th century. The forerunner of the Brunswick Company began commercial manufacture in 1845. In San Francisco, California, several manufacturers were active by the late 1800s
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