Bob, Hayes, and Charles—the three men who came up with the concept—were among those in attendance. A Nel-Spot Gun, paintballs, basic eye protection, and a rudimentary map of the area were given to each player. The game started with a whistle blow as the players set off into the jungle. Some people used their pace to get to the flag stations ahead of their competitors. Others set up ambushes outside flag stations in the hopes of annihilating their enemies.
Finally, forester Ritchie White emerged victoriously. White went for a stealthy approach. He marched silently from flag station to flag station, gathering all of his flags without firing a single shot. The pistol, or as they called it, the marker, was never meant to be used on people. Rather, loggers and cattlemen were supposed to use it. Nelson Paint Company invented the very first paintball pistol in the s. It was originally referred to as a marker, but it was never meant to be used on humans.
Loggers and cattlemen, on the other hand, made extensive use of it. Paintball markers were mostly used by loggers to mark trees, while cattlemen used them to mark their cattle to keep an accurate record of the track. Paintballs used to be filled with a viscid, oil-based paint rather than one that could be washed away with water. The idea that loggers, ranchers, and other outdoor enthusiasts use these creative paintballs to mark items comes from here.
A horse pill laced with paint was the first paintball sample. He did this by encasing paint in a gelatin film that explodes on impact and can be fired through the air by his paintball marker. Nelson was only responsible for the invention of the gelatin film for collecting paint. He collaborated with Crosman to create the Crosman , the first paint marker, to fire this gelatinous ball of paint. Unfortunately, the relationship with Crosman was short-lived, and the first paintball markers were soon turned over to Daisy, a BB gun manufacturer.
Paintballs are also known as paintball markers because they were once used to identify livestock or trees from afar.
Hayes Noel and Charles Gains debated the viability of city dwellers in the woods later in the s and agreed to make a game out of it. For the first paintball game, their friend Bob Gurnsey drew up a set of rules. They were all set to assemble a group of people and try out the latest survival game from here.
Hayes Noel, a Wall Street stockbroker, and Charles Gaines, a writer, are about to settle a longstanding gin-soaked argument: could an average, city-living person survive in the woods when pitted against a professional hunter? They decided that the Nel-Spot paintball marker and a set of rules written up by Bob Gurnsey would help them play a game that would give them a definitive answer Charles Nelson of the Nelson Paint Company designed the first paintball gun in the mid-sixties as an efficient way of marking trees that needed to be cut down.
It was also used by ranchers to mark cattle. This is why many people, including Paintballing Ltd, still refer to a paintball gun as a paintball marker. The very first paintball was a gelatin horse pill that Charles injected paint into. Charles collaborated with the Crosman Company to have the Crosman made, the first paintball marker, but it was not a financial success and Crosman halted manufacture. The result was a complete new line of paintball markers, with the focus on making them as cheap as possible and some in bright, non-firearm looking designs.
A couple of years later, this business sale would have huge repercussions in the industry. Competing companies were developing the first electronic paintball gun, a behind the scenes arms race that would have a major impact a few years later.
The Shocker was unveiled in PneuVentures, Inc was the designer and manufacturer, and Smart Parts was the sole distributor.
The partnership was short-lived, Smart Parts going on to manufacture the Shocker in and PneuVentures developing but never releasing the Cyber, a marker with an LCD screen and built-in chronograph. Brass Eagle is split from Daisy to be stand-alone company. This new and revolutionary design of electropneumatic paintball gun was originally to be distributed as the Brass Eagle Angel, but this deal ultimately never materialized.
WDP went on to distribute the Angel, taking it to legendary cult status through brilliant marketing and sponsorship deals. From to the early s, the Angel was the most winning gun in tournament paintball. The years saw the first use of two similar products destined to change the face of the game. WDP, at a tournament in England, unveiled Hyperball. This was a small paintball field utilizing a ribbed, large diameter irrigation pipe as bunkers on the field.
The other was the first airball field, a similar arrangement except for the bunkers being inflated balloon-like structures. Soon, tournament-level paintball would leave the woods and abandon camouflage as more brightly colored, eye catching sports apparel became the norm. Paintball began to show up on the shelves of Walmart and other national big box stores in , when Brass Eagle did a push to place products there.
The result would have major repercussions on the industry. The downside was many new players frustrated with the cheap, low quality equipment and a rise in vandalism and misdemeanors involving paintball markers.
Viewloader is finally granted the patent they applied for regarding the first electronic paintball loader. All competing companies must now pay royalties, thus being the first wave of The Paintball Patent Wars. The Model 98, eventually evolving into the 98 Custom and the 98 Custom Platinum, becomes famous for its incredible durability and reliable performance, making it the most popular rental marker ever.
The owner of Viewloader chose to cash out and sold the company and lucrative patent royalties to Brass Eagle in The first items to be rated by the ASTM are rate of fire, goggle lenses and velocity. The paintball industry and the game itself achieved bona fide legitimacy. In , the first collegiate paintball league holds the first College National Championships, with the University of Illinois taking first place.
The NPPL , in , bans the use of barrel plugs at events and requires the use of barrel covers , also known as barrel bags or barrel condoms. The move is due to the more visible barrel cover when off the field, as well as increased safety due to the tendency of barrel plugs to be shot out from multiple firings of sensitive electronic triggers.
As most products and ideas in tournament play eventually trickle down into recreational play, the barrel cover soon becomes the international BBD Barrel Blocking Device standard. The first Bob Long Intimidator paintball gun, debuted the year before, begins to gather a loyal following and then takes over the high end market.
National Paintball Supply, originally a distributor of other products, was slowly creating its own product lines before stepping up and buying Diablo Direct, thus securing a major paintball manufacturing capacity.
The new game involves a small square field, regulation bunker layout, and a running game clock. Players try to hang a flag at the other end of the field, and then play stops for a regulation time before playing the next point. Players needed to be on field for the start of the point or play short like American football, and penalties were player time served in a penalty box similar to hockey.
This is considered to be the most extreme instance of cheating ever seen in competitive paintball. Now there were two leagues competing for players, with both trying to beat the other to getting on television first.
The Paintball Patent Wars. Using this, Smart Parts initiated a series of lawsuits regarding markers that were built during the patent pending period. When the first case was won and set precedence, a major shock wave went through the industry as royalties and fines loomed for many companies. Several smaller manufacturers immediately ceased making electronic markers, or eventually closed their doors and cited the SP lawsuits as the primary reason.
A huge backlash against Smart Parts grew amongst many players. K2 Sports, the famous ski and snowboard company, stepped up and purchased Brass Eagle. Thus the Brass Eagle, Viewloader and JT brands were now under the umbrella of a major sporting goods distributor. PMI purchased R. Scherer, securing the largest dedicated paintball manufacturing facility in the world.
Tippmann releases the first Flatline Barrel. It is a curved barrel that puts backspin on the ball to increase its effective range and flatten the trajectory. Many players consider it a gimmick or not as effective as claimed; it does develop a cult following of loyal users.
Compressed air tanks are becoming more and more accepted as the early misconceptions about HPA are proved wrong and its use becoming necessary for high end tournament guns.
Summit Partners, a venture capitalist firm, acquires Tippmann Pneumatics, changing its name to Tippmann Sports. While paintball magazines and websites focused on the tournament side of the game, a new movement was growing under the radar. The overwhelmingly vast majority of paintball players were still dressed in camouflage and running around in the woods. The industry, ever trying to get paintball on television, considered this to be a negative image and did everything it could to keep it out of the media.
Regardless of their intentions, the fact was that not only did the largest paintball consumer base not want to play on airball fields, but a growing number wanted markers and equipment that more closely resembled real firearms.
Called Milsim Military Simulation , this paintball subculture grew steadily and was fostered by companies such as Special Ops Paintball. More and more woodsball articles and reviews begin showing up in traditional tournament paintball magazines. Greg Hastings, a well-known professional paintball player and the founder of Redz Paintball, introduced the first successful paintball game for the Xbox game platform.
The year saw the release of the original Smart Parts Ion paintball gun. The Ion utilized a simplified spool valve system similar to the Smart Parts Shocker SFT, and crushed the lower to mid-end paintball marker market. The Ion was lightweight with an easy to achieve high rate of fire for only a quarter of the cost of a high end marker. Suddenly the gap of firepower on the field between low end and high end virtually disappeared, and paint sales soared.
Planet Eclipse releases the first Ego paintball gun, a stacked tube electro-pneumatic that begins to edge out the Bob Long Intimidator as the dominant high end marker in national tournaments. The woodsball revolution continues to grow and the industry can no longer ignore it. Smart Parts releases the SP8, a milsim version of the successful Ion. Tippmann launched the X7, a magnesium-bodied marker with a modular design to readily accept upgrades and look like several different models of real military weapons.
One Tippmann experiment that failed was the Tippmann C3 propane-powered paintball marker, using combustion as its pressure source. The shaky economy of the US began to have repercussions in the paintball industry. A private investment firm stepped up in late and bought both PMI and NPS, merging the two largest paintball distributors into one company now called Kee Action Sports.
Dave Perlmutter and David Freeman both retire from the industry, while Gino Postorivo goes into other sports industries and waits for his non-compete to expire.
Other manufacturers begin to close or sell, citing poor sales or the Smart Parts lawsuits and royalties as the main causes. All of that soon changed in mid After a costly court battle it was ruled that WDP, even though they filed their patents late, were part of the creation of the electro-pneumatic marker.
As a result, the patent was now jointly shared between the two companies.
0コメント