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paintballimpact.com / History of the Game /
The History of Paintball
Paintball has come a long way from its roots to where it is now with thousands of fields around the globe, and millions of players worldwide. The game has involved from a bunch of people shooting paintballs at each other in the wild woods, to groups such as the XBall League with professional teams and a national audience. Paintball players have gotten stronger, quicker, and faster, and paintball guns and gear has grown to shoot faster and more accurately. But some things about the game have remained the same. Paintball is a sport for adventure seekers, thrill seekers who enjoy the adrenaline rush of surrounding players, eliminating them, diving for cover, firing sniper shots, and the great energy rush that comes from playing To learn more about the history of paintball, read on below.
The sport of paintball was the brainchild of Hayes Noel. Hayes Noel was a New York City stockholder who grew weary of the 20th century American whose life in the business sector made them soft and unable to defend themselves in the event of a real crisis. Hayes Noel, being a New Yorker, thought of designing a game where players could build up their natural survival instincts in the event that they would really need to use them. Hayes recruited a number of his friends to create a game of tag where people could eliminate each other using non-lethal ammo. Hayes Noel, and George Butler then came across a paint marker in an agricultural catalog. The marker and paint ammo were sold by Nelson Paint, and were used for marking cattle and trees for cutting down. Hayes and Butler ordered a number of markers and organized the first paintball game in New Hampshire. The original design of the game was called the survival game where everyone would shoot at each other, until one champion was left standing. The helter skelter survival inspired the founding fathers of paintball to organize an official game.
The first organized paintball contest was held in Henniker, New Hampshire. The organized event was organized by Hayes Noel and Bob Gurney, on a huge 80 acre wood lot. This game was played under a unique flag format where flags were placed in midpoints of the sides of the field. The winner of the game was the first person to collect all the flags without getting hit. The player who won this first game, Ritchie White, was able to capture all of the flags without getting hit, or even firing a single shot. Because of the size of the field, the game was long, and the action was sporadic, as opposed to the quicker, paintballs flying versions of future games played with more people, smaller fields, and faster ammo.
In summary, the first paintball fields were played in natural conditions like open fields, wooded lots, and the woods and streams. The fields were large, and the camouflage clothes worn in these games reflected the environment the paintball players competed in. And the markers used were pump markers, capable of firing only one paintball before they could be fired again. The original marker by Nelson Paint was replaced by guns such as the UM68 and the Splatmaster. The UM68 was manufactured by Pursuit Marketing Inc. (PMI). After the first official capture the flag game, the game took off pretty quickly, and fields were going up left and right. Natural cover paints were replaced by inflatable bunkers that enabled field operators more control in designing their own field. And guns that could fire over 17 paintballs per second made the game a lot faster.
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Paintball Guns 
