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The Brunswick Story

Brunswick. The name is legendary.
The Brunswick legacy is rich in history, a history that spans nearly two centuries. But even legends have humble beginnings. John Moses Brunswick started in a small Cincinnati wood shop building carriages.

The young John Moses Brunswick was known for his attention to detail and impeccable standards of quality. Then one night in 1845 Brunswick saw a billiard table for the first time and was spellbound by its intricacy and beauty. As a carriage maker who was passionate about woodworking, he was fascinated with its design and workmanship. Brunswick quickly decided this was his chance to build something with unlimited potential and lasting beauty.

“If it is wood, we can build it, and we can build it better than anyone else,” Brunswick said, and he lived up to his word. Within ten years he had carved an impeccable reputation for his fine tables and had built the foundation of what would become the largest billiard company in the world.

The Legend Continues
In 1845, the J.M. Brunswick Company produced its first billiard table. By 1850, Brunswick tables were known around the world as masterpieces of original craftsmanship and design. The world has changed tremendously, but the Brunswick commitment to exceptional quality remains. John Moses Brunswick’s creative vision continues to thrive at Brunswick Billiards in Bristol, Wisconsin, where you’ll find over a century and a half of exceptional engineering and innovative style built into every table. A timeless tribute to excellence in design and workmanship, every model is backed by a lifetime warranty and has the best resale value in the industry.

Part of the Legend
Experience our rich history for yourself. By investing in a Brunswick table, you not only own the best playing pool table in the world, you own part of the Brunswick heritage…nearly two centuries of quality products, outstanding service, and value par excellence.

BRUNSWICK BILLIARDS
Some traditions are worth keeping forever.


Important Events

Brunswick Billiards: Historical highlights from the first 150 years, 1845 to 1995

1845
John Moses Brunswick, after emigrating from Switzerland in 1834 and apprenticing in New York City and Philadelphia, establishes his Cincinnati Carriage Making Company. The product line is expanded beyond carriages to include cabinets, tables, and chairs. The company’s first billiard table was produced this year for a successful Cincinnati meatpacker. Word-of-mouth promotion quickly brought requests for more tables.

1848
Brunswick opens its first sales office in Chicago on State Street. This first branch soon expands to include two factories and an 8,000 square foot billiard parlor on Washington Street. Additional offices, sales rooms, and billiard parlors open in New Orleans in 1852 and St. Louis in 1859.

1873
Demand for Brunswick tables continues to increase. Brunswick merges with rival Julius Balke’s Great Western Billiard Table Manufactory to become The J. M. Brunswick and Balke Company. Pamphlets published two years after the great Chicago fire describe the company as manufacturing 700 tables annually, with 350 Brunswick tables in play in the city of Chicago, and selling from Canada to Mexico, with tables in every principal city in the west.

1884
Brunswick joins with another rival to become “The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company,” the largest billiard equipment operation in the world, larger than all its competitors combined. Expansion of the product line now includes elaborate and ornate front and back bars made of rich woods, flawless mirrors, and stained glass. Originally offered as special order items, demand from taverns grew so great that a new factory in Dubuque, Iowa manufactured and shipped the bars around the world. The bars began to gather design awards at international exhibitions. Many of them are still in use today, becoming focal points in popular bars and restaurants around the country.

1888
Brunswick is one of the most successful businesses in Chicago, operating from a five story building on State Street, with an additional factory located at Rush and Kinzie and one at Huron and Sedgwick that covered an entire city block with its factory, warehouse and lumber drying plant.

1890
Company President Moses Bensinger works to experiment and research better ways to make billiard tables and equipment. Important patents for rubber cushions are registered and other technical innovations evolve.

1906
Brunswick opens a new 100,000 square foot plant in Muskegon, Michigan. Among the many departments at the plant: billiard table assembly, billiard balls, cue manufacturing, and chalk. Company-owned boats brought cut maple from Brunswick’s lumber mill in Big Bay on Lake Huron; the lumber itself came from a thousand acres of Brunswick timberland near Lake Superior. The company owned its own slate quarries in Vermont and Pennsylvania. It was the world’s largest user of hardwood. Manufacturing over 400,000 cues a year, there was enough reserve maple in Brunswick drying kilns (the world’s largest) to make an additional 600,000 cues.

1912
Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. has main offices in Chicago (executive headquarters since 1908), New York, Cincinnati and San Francisco, with factories in six U.S. cities plus Toronto and Paris, offices and salesrooms in 43 cities across America, “foreign” offices in Honolulu, Mexico City and Paris, and Canadian offices in Montreal, Edmonton, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg.

1917
Ivorylene Pockets Balls make their first appearance in Brunswick-Balke-Collender Price List No. 785, for $16 per set Preceded by Compo-Ivory and Empire sets in 1905, Ivorylene balls receive the Brunswick registered trademark “Dart” in the early 1930s and eventually evolve into today’s world renown Centennial® Ball.

1931–34
Willie Mosconi joins the pro staff of Brunswick Billiards. Mosconi is destined to become pockets billiards world champion 15 times between 1941 and 1957. In 1932 Brunswick sponsors a World Tournament, with Ralph Greenleaf placing first and Jimmy Caras second. Caras was offered his first Brunswick contract to play exhibitions around the country on Brunswick tables. During 1933–34 Brunswick’s staff of 21 professionals travel the country doing exhibitions.

1945
Brunswick celebrates 100 years of continuous operation...Brunswick engineers develop the “cast phenolic resin” ball. The formula was so new and different that the Chicago firm manufacturing the balls had to post a heavy armed guard around the factory to ensure the formula’s security. That basic ball remains in use today and through many improvements over the years has evolved into today’s “Centennial® Ball”. During the years of World War II more than 13,000 billiard tables were installed at military and naval bases here and overseas.

1960
The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company changes its name to Brunswick Corporation.

1961
In development since 1958, it’s the debut year of the AR6100 series Gold Crown™ table. Destined to become the finest table ever made, it set new standards for the industry. Refinements and upgrades over the next 30 plus years bring the table to the ultimate Gold Crown™ IV, unmatched in reputation, preferred by professionals, used in tournaments and exhibitions worldwide.

1974
A devastating flood in Brunswick Billiards’ Marion, Virginia facility results in the destruction of many records and the loss of much historical data.

1985
St. Ignatius College Prep was one of the few buildings to escape the Chicago Fire. It still stands today and houses this magnificent library built by Brunswick craftsmen under the direct supervision of John Brunswick in 1872. In 1985 Brunswick funds the complete restoration of the Brunswick Library.

1995 to today
Brunswick, an American company, begins its second 150 years with a dedication to product and service quality, to design excellence and craftsmanship, and to market leadership. A Brunswick billiard table is quintessentially American, with a heritage and reputation backed by the traditions established, built, and nurtured over the last 150 years. Do you own your piece of history?

Famous Owners

From the time that John Moses Brunswick built his first billiards table back in 1845, the company he founded has remained singularly dedicated to premier design, superior craftsmanship, and uncompromising quality and performance. It is no wonder that, for more than 150 years, owning a Brunswick table has been a matter of pride and prestige.

In 1845—and the decades that followed—a billiard table was a fine status symbol. The mere presence of a table stated that you were a person of wealth and influence—because you could afford a table, you could afford a home large enough to accommodate one! But a man of influence and position had more than one reason to own a billiard table. Aside from the pure enjoyment of the game—and impressing guests—a man could complete negotiations over a friendly game of billiards. Whether commercial, political, or even military, serious issues could be discussed, and deals could be struck, over the neutral ground of a billiard table.

John Brunswick recognized that his customers were affluent and educated so he built tables that appealed to their elite and elevated tastes. In fact, it is because of this that Brunswick became the very first American brand name with true prestige.

The first real American celebrity who owned a Brunswick table was an immensely important person in American history—Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a self-confessed “billiards addict.” He described the game as a “health inspiring, scientific game, lending recreation to the otherwise fatigued mind.”

It is quite possible that critical issues of national interest—slavery, international relations and the civil war—were handled over the slate of a Brunswick table.

General George Custer also owned a Brunswick table. One can only imagine the important issues he might have discussed with other military leaders over that table.

We know of one account in the 1890s, when Buffalo Bill Cody, Texas Jack Uhumbro and Wild Bill Hickock were touring with their “Wild West” show. While drinking in a tavern in Boston, a group of about thirty longshoremen decided to see how tough these “Westerners” really were. Well, Hickock grabbed a pool cue, and about one minute later, there were four people left in that room—Hickock, Cody, Texas Jack, and of course, the bartender. Now, maybe it was the beautiful styling, or the craftsmanship, or the sturdy construction. But when Buffalo Bill bought billiard tables for his hotel in Cheyenne, you can be sure that night in Boston had something to do with his decision to buy Brunswicks.

The foremost captains of industry—Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, William Vanderbilt, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan and William Randolph Hearst—all of these people owned Brunswick tables. And we can only speculate what issues were discussed, what negotiations were undertaken, and what matters were handled over a game of billiards.

Teddy Roosevelt—our Secretary of the Navy and the hero of San Juan Hill, the President of the United States and, later, a distinguished wild game hunter—owned a Brunswick table. How many of the decisions that shaped our world were reached over a Brunswick table?

Among sports figures and celebrities, Mark Twain, one of our nation’s most renowned authors, Babe Ruth, one of our great sports legends, and Humphrey Bogart, one of our greatest actors—all owned Brunswick tables. Nat King Cole, Lou Gehrig, James Dean, and of course, Frank Sinatra owned Brunswick tables.

There was a Brunswick table in the White House during the administrations of several recent presidents. And when President Eisenhower established Camp David, it was furnished with not one, but four Brunswick tables. Every President since Eisenhower—Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Clinton—has used those tables.

A stream of notable visitors, including Winston Churchill, Nikita Krushchev, Charles de Gaulle, Anwar Sadat and King Hussein, all knew those tables. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were known to be pretty good players. What issues of world security, what areas of common ground, what conflicts were settled over those Brunswick tables?

A Brunswick isn’t just a table, it’s an experience.

Billiards Balls

Brunswick did not initially produce their own line of composition balls, and were agents for the Hyatt Billiard Ball Company of Albany, New York. Brunswick did, however, produce ivory balls for the trade early on.

Ivory from elephant tusk grows in an annual ring, much like a tree. A blood vessel that goes through the center of the tusk can be seen as a black dot. This dot becomes the center mark of the ball, and is the point where the ball is pinned when being turned. A ball must be turned perfectly in order to roll properly.

1906—Brunswick opens a plant in Muskegon, Michigan and begins to produce their own line of balls in a big way. At this time, “Mineralite,” “Compo-lvory” and “Empire” sets came into being. Advertisements prominently feature the inside of the balls, as shown here.

Beginning around 1910 and continuing throughout the 1920s, the Empire and Ivorylene pockets balls were two “best sellers” for Brunswick. The numbers in early Ivorylenes were placed in the stripe. Later the numbers would be moved to the field.

The early 1930s introduced the first mention of the term “Dart” and brought the emergence of the first, (now trademarked) dart markings on the balls. Balls were “torture tested”—a grueling three floor drop test onto a steel plate! By 1934, the “Ivorylene Dart” balls appear in catalogs and advertisements.

By the 1940s, the quality of these balls became apparent. Not surprisingly, the type of ball manufactured by Brunswick back then set the standards for, and became the forerunner to, the Centennial® Ball.

Early in the 1950s, new “Centennial Cast Phenolic Balls” are introduced. These balls, however, bear little resemblance to the Centennial® balls of today, appearing without the heavy inlaid numbers, the now familiar black circle border and of course, the famous darts. The Ivorylene balls, on the other hand, do appear with a form of these identifying marks.

In the middle of the 1950s the Centennial® ball brand finally emerges with a black circle border and our famous, trademarked “darts.”

After 1966, there are no more Ivorylenes. In 1967 an ad was run showing the cosmetic evolution of Centennial® balls; clear, sparkling colors, a heavily inlaid black ring, heavy numbers (now cast as part of the ball), and heavier, more defined “dart” markings. Also introduced at this time: new boxes—white with blue printing, featuring a Brunswick logo—and the first sets of “Gold Crown™” balls.

Considered a different “grade” of Centennial® balls, the original set of Gold Crown™ balls has numbers in the field instead of in the stripe, has no darts and no black ring around the numbers.

Today, Centennial® Pocket balls are the standard of excellence in the industry. Made of premium grade phenolic resin, Centennial® balls are exactingly ground and polished for absolute true and accurate roll. Distinguished with the celebrated "dart" and sparkling with lustrous colors, Centennial® balls are superior in both playing quality and appearance.

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