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 rubber cushions, with the whole elevated above the floor. An obsolete term is billiard...
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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 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), 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...
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