Who invented the dart board? I guess we will never know, it was probably some archer in the middle ages who converted the bottom of a barrel or tree slice into the first dart board and threw his arrows at it. Dart boards were made of wood for many years mostly from elm and had to be soaked in water overnight to stop the board from splitting. Any way we do know who invented the first Bristle board, that was Nodor in the 1930's, they were approached by an inventor who had an idea to make a dart board from rope! It must have sounded crazy at the time, but it worked. They took some rope strands all the same length and compressed them tightly together and hey presto the first "Bristle" board was born. This was a huge enlarge on the former wooden board. For a start no more soaking and the board was self medical and long lived. It was an instant success.
Nodor got a patent for the produce and so were the only maker for 25 years or so for the life of the patent. After the patent expired other manufacturers entered the arena most notably Winmau . And you conception Nodor was a funny name. Apparently the name Winmau was made up from the first three letters of the two names of the wife of the enterprise director "Winifred Maud" hence Winmau.
Nodor and Winmau then slugged it out for dominance in the dart board shop with one enterprise trying to take over the other for many years. During this time Winmau came up with their renowned Blade board with ultra thin wire separators and Nodor came up with the first staple free bulls eye dart board.
The bristle boards were used in all the big tournaments that started in the 70's and are still used today in the prestigious tournaments like the Las Vegas superior and the British Lakeside tournament.
Then came Electronics, the electronic dart board came on the scene and changed the game overnight. The odd thing about electronic boards is they are covered in hundreds of small holes for the special soft tip darts to enter. At first behold you think how can the dart get into those holes so exactly? The holes are centered at the base of a dimple like the dimples of a golf ball, guiding the soft tip darts to the holes in the board. And it works very well with nowhere near the number of bounce outs you might expect. There are sensors beneath the holes which trigger the electronics to record the score and deducts or adds the score to the old one automatically, depending on the game. This was a great boon to darters as they no longer had to keep score and the boards could be networked to derive all the scores from the boards on a computer, great for tournaments.
The disagreement with the electronic dart board are that you have to use soft tip darts, and the tips are made of plastic so as not to damage the board. (Never use general steel tip darts on an electronic board) Also the maximum weight of dart allowed on most electronic dart boards is 20 grams.
You can now have the best of both the steel tip and soft tip game now with the introduction of the new BristleTech boards which have bristle type fibres that can take the steel tips as well as the soft tipped darts and still work with the electronics. This could very well be the technology that will dominate the dart world from now on.
So there you have it, we have come a long way from the elm wooden dart boards and I'm sure there will be even more developments to come, especially with the combination Bristle type boards and electronics. Electronic darts is very popular on both sides of the Atlantic now and maybe even the pro game will embrace it before long.
The Milestones of the Dart Board May You Interested This:
