James Laverance
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- Feb 12, 2013
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Harvard Hockey in 1881+ Puck Invention
- Thread starter James Laverance
- Start date
Canadiens1958
Registered User
Great
Another great contribution.
The competition for ice amongst hockey players and skaters was also reported in the first organized Montréal game in 1875.
Another great contribution.
The competition for ice amongst hockey players and skaters was also reported in the first organized Montréal game in 1875.
James Laverance
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- Feb 12, 2013
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I found this interesting passage out of the Harvard Daily Echo dated January 19th 1881...
"There is a large sheet of fairly good ice on Holmes Field, near the society building. This ice is at present used only by the youthful citizens of Cambridge, who are breaking off the young birch trees that have been set out there, in order to make hockey sticks.There is plenty of room on this ice for a game of hockey, and it would be well if a game could be started there every afternoon while the skating lasts.During the winter we have few enough chances for out-of-door exercise, and this opportunity should not be neglected. The streets of Cambridge are at present too icy to make walking agreeable, and it requires too much time to go to the various ponds near Cambridge for skating. If there is not sufficient interest in hockey to start a game on Holmes, perhaps we might be favored with the spectacle of a game of lacrosse on the ice."
https://books.google.ca/books?id=oz...ved=0ahUKEwjRkpKhwLrNAhVp54MKHdYcAb4Q6AEIMzAB
Plus this may not be a contempory source I know although still interesting...
The modern hockey puck was invented around 1875. There are two different versions of its origination. One story claims that in 1875, students at Boston University sliced a rubber ball in half to make a puck.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=8E...ved=0ahUKEwjiwcnjw7rNAhVs2IMKHf-PA8sQ6AEIIzAA
"There is a large sheet of fairly good ice on Holmes Field, near the society building. This ice is at present used only by the youthful citizens of Cambridge, who are breaking off the young birch trees that have been set out there, in order to make hockey sticks.There is plenty of room on this ice for a game of hockey, and it would be well if a game could be started there every afternoon while the skating lasts.During the winter we have few enough chances for out-of-door exercise, and this opportunity should not be neglected. The streets of Cambridge are at present too icy to make walking agreeable, and it requires too much time to go to the various ponds near Cambridge for skating. If there is not sufficient interest in hockey to start a game on Holmes, perhaps we might be favored with the spectacle of a game of lacrosse on the ice."
https://books.google.ca/books?id=oz...ved=0ahUKEwjRkpKhwLrNAhVp54MKHdYcAb4Q6AEIMzAB
Plus this may not be a contempory source I know although still interesting...
The modern hockey puck was invented around 1875. There are two different versions of its origination. One story claims that in 1875, students at Boston University sliced a rubber ball in half to make a puck.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=8E...ved=0ahUKEwjiwcnjw7rNAhVs2IMKHf-PA8sQ6AEIIzAA
Killion
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- Feb 19, 2010
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...huh... thats interesting... the puck/ball dealeo seems a little... odd. A ball as everyone knows is spherical so cutting it in half, rather impracticable....You'd have to cut it in 3, using the middle section and you'd have to use an awfully hard & heavier rubber ball in order for it to be practicable, usable at all. Squash balls are too small & light, so no idea what they might have used.... Story doesnt seem to hold up to scrutiny James.
James Laverance
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- Feb 12, 2013
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I think they meant to slice a rubber ball off the top and bottom Killion to make it into a flatter circuler object.
Terrier
Registered User
A picture of the two rinks built inside Harvard Stadium over a century ago.
http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/mice/history/timelineoftradition
http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/mice/history/timelineoftradition
Canadiens1958
Registered User
Great Stuff
Great stuff. Very interesting that the format used to align the rinks inside Harvard Stadium was very similar to the format used in Montreal and other cities for temporary ice hockey/skating rinks on four season outdoor athletic fields.
Great stuff. Very interesting that the format used to align the rinks inside Harvard Stadium was very similar to the format used in Montreal and other cities for temporary ice hockey/skating rinks on four season outdoor athletic fields.
James Laverance
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- Feb 12, 2013
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Street Hockey in Boston Common
This was wrtitten in 1877...
"The habits of Bostonians upon Sundays, thirty years ago, were very different from what they are now."
"The Latin and High School pupils, who had just moved into their new building in Bedford street, played hockey in the autumn from the Joy and West-street path eastward to Park-street fence, without" a policeman to watch them, and without so much as a baker's dozen of idlers interested in the progress of their game, where there would be thousands to run and see them now.Yet that very ball-ground was then, as it is now, the most frequented part of the Common. Occasionally a sort of town and gown row between the young lovers of the humanities in Bedford street and the less fortunate " Mason-streeters," as they were termed, arose upon the slopes below the ghincko tree, nor did the parents wonder, when the young hopeful came home to his supper with a cut lip,*a smashed nose, or a bruised eye, that such things should be, although some mothers lamented that their children would not go round the Common, as they did, instead of across it."
https://books.google.ca/books?id=nH...ved=0ahUKEwiLkciu9LvNAhVI5IMKHayEByAQ6AEIJzAA
This was wrtitten in 1877...
"The habits of Bostonians upon Sundays, thirty years ago, were very different from what they are now."
"The Latin and High School pupils, who had just moved into their new building in Bedford street, played hockey in the autumn from the Joy and West-street path eastward to Park-street fence, without" a policeman to watch them, and without so much as a baker's dozen of idlers interested in the progress of their game, where there would be thousands to run and see them now.Yet that very ball-ground was then, as it is now, the most frequented part of the Common. Occasionally a sort of town and gown row between the young lovers of the humanities in Bedford street and the less fortunate " Mason-streeters," as they were termed, arose upon the slopes below the ghincko tree, nor did the parents wonder, when the young hopeful came home to his supper with a cut lip,*a smashed nose, or a bruised eye, that such things should be, although some mothers lamented that their children would not go round the Common, as they did, instead of across it."
https://books.google.ca/books?id=nH...ved=0ahUKEwiLkciu9LvNAhVI5IMKHayEByAQ6AEIJzAA
Last edited:
Oscar Acosta
Registered User
- Mar 19, 2011
- 7,695
- 369
I remember reading this in a Brian McFarlane hockey history book when I was a kid. Some worker in the ice facility got pissed off that the ball would bounce everywhere and broke something so he took out his knife and cut the ends off so it wouldn't bounce. His anger at the hockey players changed the game. Or so the story went.
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