THE TABLE TENNIS - Graham Trimming Tennis Collector 29.pdf · THE TABLE TENNIS The Journal of the Table Tennis Collectors’ Society 29 Summer 2002 In this issue… · Update to membership

THE TABLE TENNIS

The Journal of the Table Tennis Collectors’ Society

29 Summer

2002

IIn this issue…n this issue… · Update to membership List

(p2)

· Latest from Ebay (p3)

· The Music of Table Tennis (p4) by Alan Duke

· Ivor Montagu—A Personal Recollection (p8) by Gerald Gurney

· Trix Joke Co. (p9) from Keith Bowler

· Günther’s Pins: Part 2 World Championships (p10) by Gün-ther Angenendt

· The Foroma Wizard (p10) by Dick Frost

· Philatelic Pages (p12) by An-ton Zwiebel and a contribution from Winfried Engelbrecht

· Kelen—Life After Table Ten-nis (p14) from Keith Bowler

· Postcards from the World Championships (p16) from Hans-Peter Trautmann

No. 29 The Table Tennis Collector Page 1

The Music of Table Tennis The foremost feature inside is an incredible piece of work by Alan Duke on the Music of Table Tennis. Alan has collated a huge database of music associated with our sport and has also provided us with relevant images, whether the attractive front covers of early sheet music, or record and CD cover art-work.

Reproduced above is the cover of a piece of sheet music, imaginatively entitled “Ping Pong” and dat-ing from 1901.

Sent by Hans-Peter Trautmann—and probably requires no English translation!

Editor: Graham Trimming 17 Gwendale, Pinkneys Green Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 6SH England Tel: +44 (0)1628 636978 email: [email protected]

Next issue - publication November 2002 - copy date 1 October 2002

29 Summer 2002

TTHEHE T TABLEABLE TTENNISENNIS

CCOLLECTOROLLECTOR

From the Editor,

Here we are again—it is July and issue no. 29 is ready (despite the fact that I erroneously gave the publica-tion date as June in the last issue).

Many thanks to the large number of members who commented positively on the previous issue—I am very pleased that it created a good im-pression. I am especially pleased that Gerald liked the way I have suc-ceeded him in his work.

I am pleased to welcome back many of last year’s members who had pre-viously not renewed and to especially welcome some new members—not least my own colleagues at Cippen-ham Table Tennis Club, Mike Rho-des and Tony Pacitto.

In my region of the World this is the close season for table tennis—i.e. the time that seems even busier for ad-ministrators of the game with annual reports to write, annual general meet-ings to convene, membership forms for the new season to circulate and planning for the next season to un-dertake. Best of luck for the new sea-son to you all!

Graham Trimming


Gerald Gurney In the last issue it was my pleasure to include tributes to Gerald Gur-ney—the founder of the Table Ten-nis Collectors’ Society, who pro-duced the first 27 editions of this journal.

Gerald writes to send his thanks for the tributes in the Spring issue and for the several letters received; “I am most grateful”, he says.

As the new editor, I am thrilled that Gerald is continuing to supply fea-tures for the journal and his insight into the great-grandfather of table tennis, Ivor Montagu, in this edition will, I am sure, be of enormous inter-est to historians of the early years of the ITTF.

The following are new members or previous members now renewed since the list pub-lished in the March issue.

Fabio Colombo CP 181, 6996 Ponte Cremenaga, Switzerland. Tel: +39 347 7370260 Fax: +39 0332 532046 Email: [email protected] Web site: http://members.xoon.it/eurialofab Interests: TT books; chess; athletics Sale/Exchange: My book "Una Racchetta Rossa Dietro la Vetrina” Acquire: Hammersley TT 1985; Schaefen Digest '89; Chinese TTA World TT Stars 1959-1989

Ron Crayden 7 Grennell Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM1 3DW, England. Tel: +44 (0) 208 644 5004 Interests: Large collection of books (approx. 400) and programmes

Luciano de Castris Via G.B. Vico 9, 83100 Avellino, Italy. Tel: +39 825 26678 Email: [email protected] Interests: All TT philatelic items Sale/Exchange: Philatelic items Acquire: Philatelic items

Richard Frost Gerona, Church Road, Grandborough, Rugby, Warwick-shire, CV23 8DH, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1788 810867 Fax: +44 (0) 1788 810867 Email: [email protected] Interests: Philatelic

Siegfried Furchert Goldbachstrasse 17E, 37269 Eschwege, Germany. Tel: +49 056511 13138 Email: [email protected] Interests: TT stamps, old postcards, postmarks, hand-stamps, cards, letters.

Martin Holland 44 Victoria Road, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, LA14 5JU, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1229 837374 Email: [email protected] Interests: Postcards, stamps, FDCs, books.

Randy Koo Torenwacht 37, 2353 DB Leiderdorp, Holland.

Peter Longhurst 18 Woodlands Crescent, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, MK18 1PH, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1280 813356

Ken Muhr c/o English Table Tennis Association, Queensbury House, Havelock Road, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 1HF, Eng-land. Tel: +44 (0) 1424 722525 Fax: +44 (0) 1424 422103 Email: [email protected] Web site: www.etta.co.uk Interests: History of TT; books on TT

Tony Pacitto 100 Birkinstyle Lane, Shirland, Alfreton, Derbyshire, DE55 6BT, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1773 834957 Interests: Table Tennis; Chess

Jose Ransome Conifers, Church Lane, Ormesby, Middlesbrough, Cleve-land, TS7 9AU, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1642 322223 Fax: +44 (0) 1642 300872 Email: [email protected] Interests: general interest in TT; have a few pins and articles. Acquire: nice original boxed set.

Mike Rhodes 57 Rochford Gardens, Slough, Berks, SL2 5XA, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1753 676122 Email: [email protected]

Keith Shepherd 3 Eastern Close, Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS2 5QY, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1702 464747 Email: [email protected] Web site: www.pantechnicon-antiques.com Interests: Early sets and bats.

Yao Zhenxu Chinese Table Tennis Association, No. C3 Longtan Road (Floor 6), Beijing, PC 100061, China. Tel: 861067120920 Fax: 861067129838 Email: [email protected] Interests: TT stamps, FD covers, postcards, coins, phonecards, pins, postal material, tickets etc. Sale/Exchange: as above

Errata to previous list: Günther Angenendt email address should read: [email protected] Robin Radford web site address should read: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/rradford/

Update to the Membership List 2002

Update and corrections to issue 28

Ebay—excellent example of Victorian pyrography on a bat sold for $112. The woman is described as wearing a turn of the century - 1910 Nouveau cap.

UK Trade Marks—the date for “Coro” got lost—it should be 13th May 1902.

Chuck Hoey, rather than his web site being “up for sale”, is currently searching for sponsors who can takeover the collec-tion and provide for its future.


Latest from Ebay www.ebay.com

This is a magazine for collectors. What better way to keep track on in-teresting items being traded and watching their prices, than on the uni-versal auction site Ebay? Read on for the latest deals.

Continued on page 7 >>>

Pyrographic Art

These fantastic bats (right) have floral decorations in red and green and are part of a set manufactured by Harry Hardesty & Co., New York. Not surprisingly, the set at-tracted a value of $215.

Not quite as expensive were the pair of Columbia racquets although they raised $125. The seller sug-gested that the name “Columbia” came from the university.

The Gibson Girl bat fetched $52 and became the first pyrographic example in the editor’s collection.

Early Sets

Here are two examples of sets which include a net on a free-standing wooden frame. Both are by McLoughlin Bros., N.Y., but whereas the one pictured above sold for $154, the one below only made $32, pe-haps because the seller restricted bids to the US and Canada.

Below is a Whiff-Waff boxed set but this one is different—it has strung racquets. The seller described it as being by W.M. Ives, Lincoln, England but this must have been the retailer as we know “Whiff-Waff” as being the version by Slazenger. Sold for $128.

Other Playing Equipment

P i c t u r e d right is an unusual ly h e a v y McLough-lin Bros. bat which sold for $60.

Right is Krazy Table Tennis, the subject of a previous article by Gerald. This example went for £41.

Above is a box of three balls moulded with a mash pattern. The editor paid £38 to add these to his collection.


The Music of Table Tennis It may come as a bit of a surprise that so many pieces of music can be gathered together under the above heading. A large number, generally very simple compositions, were published as sheet music during the ping-pong craze of the years 1901-02 (along with just about anything else to which the words ping-pong could be attached!). These were usually dances, marches, humorous songs or occasionally show tunes.

Following this initial surge, new titles appeared intermittently over the years, sometimes having no connection at all with table tennis, but instead reflecting ping-pong’s alternative meaning of ‘moving back and forth’. More recently, it has be-come quite normal for a special piece of music to be composed (and recorded) for a particular event e.g. World Champi-onships, and issued as a record (and these days, to come right up to date, as a CD).

This article enlarges upon that which appeared in issue no. 22 of the Collector.

Many thanks to all who have helped in the compilation, but special thanks to Günther Angenendt, Chuck Hoey, and Hans Kreischer. If any titles have been missed, I would welcome any details for inclusion in the list.—AD.

Title Composer(s) Date Artist(s)

Ping-Pong [Song] - the hit of “The Silver Slipper”

Percy Greenbank / Ivan Caryl (pseud. For Felix

Tilkins)

1901 Edna Wallace Hopper and Cyril Scott

Ping Pong Polka Ernest W H Allan 1901

Ping-Pong Quadrille

Ezra Read 1901

Ping-Pong Polka

Fabian Scott (pseud.) 1901

Ping-Pong, A Crazy Song

Joseph Gillott 1901

Ping! Pong! [Humorous song from “Society Crazes”]

Harold Montague 1901 Harold Monta-gue

Ping pong. (Song)

Edward Lauri / Chas. H Taylor

1901 Edward Lauri

The Ping Pong Valse

Philip E Braham 1901

Ping-Pong Barn Dance [orchestral] Ping-Pong Barn Dance

Frank Brockett

Frank Brockett

1901

1902

Ping Pong (Scherzo Charac-teristic for the Piano)

Eugene Walker 1902

Ping-Pong Polka for the Pi-anoforte

James B Smart 1902

Ping Pong Lancers No. 2: Medley Lanciers

Arranged by Benjamin M Jerome

1902

The Ping-Pong Girl [Song]

Jesse M Sanford / Matt C Woodward

1902

Society’s Craze (Ping Pong) [Song]

W G Milburn / L E Mil-burn

1902

Ping Pong Courtship Sydney P Fane 1902 Tom G Clare

Ping Pong Polly [Song] Seymour J Furth / Frank Abbott

1902

Ping-Pong [Song] Choruses for equal Voices No. 750

Herbert Botting 1902

Ping pong. [Song & chorus] Hugo O Marks / Happy Ward / Joe Kelly

1902

By Alan Duke



Table Tennis Tournament Edmund Forman 1902

Ping Pong Waltz Stanislaus Wurm 1902

I Wants A Ping Pong Man—A Coontown Determination

Howard Whitney 1902

Ping Pong Lancers

Theodore F Morse 1902

Ping-Pong Waltz

Paul de Launey 1902

Society’s Latest, or Ping-Pong (Song)

F Cyril Broxholm, Walter H Elwes

1902

Ping-Pong, Schottische

Ida Hampden 1902

Ping-Pong on the Brain (Popular Song)

Will Fieldhouse 1902 Will Fieldhouse

Ping Pong

Fred Help, Wm H Penn 1902 Paula Edwards

Ping Pong - March and Two-Step

Bart E Grady 1902

Ping-Pong March Two-Step

Samuel Fox 1902

The Ping Pong Song

Wm H Penn? 1902

Ping Pong

Wm H Penn 1902

Ping Pong Waltzes

J C Eaton 1902

Ping Pong Polka

Ed St Quentin 1902

“Ping Pong” Waltzs (sic) F W Cunard 1905

Ping-Pong-Poo Arnold Johnson / Milton Gruber / Garfield Kilgour

1920

Ping-Pong, Novelty Piano Solo (A Folly Dance)

E Frederic Curzon 1928 Billy Mayerl

Ping Pong Polka

J B Adams, Jnr 1944

Ping Pong - Swing Solos for Strings with pianoforte ac-companiments

Stephan Grappelly & Arthur Young

1946

Recreations: 4. Table Tennis

Anthony Donato 1953

Ping Pong

Sil Austin 1950s? Ella Fitzgerald

Ping Pong (Piano solo)

Louise Garrow 1950s

Ping-Pong Chatter (Piano solo)

Frieda Peycke 1950s

Ping Pong

Mary Parnell 1950s

Ping Pong Piano Solo Evelyn Strum 1950s

Amour et Ping Pong

Bernard Michel Josette Dayde



Ping-Pong for piano Hansi Alt 1957

Ping Pong Billy May 1958 Billy May’s Brass

Ping-Pong

Albert Rozin 1966

March of Sportsmen (Band Music)

Military Band of Chinese People’s Liberation Army

Ping Pong Song Cook, Greenaway, 1971 Wei Wei Wong

? [The 32nd World Table Tennis Championships]

? 1973

Invitation to the Ping-Pong Ball

Mike Batt 1974 Wombles

The Swaythling Club Interna-tional Song (to the tune of Lili Marlene)

Susie Barna Schultze, Leip

1977

Ping Pong

trad. 1978 Can (Michael Karoli,

Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit)

35th World Championships (Korea); Friendship Pyongy-ang TT Champs

1979 Film & Radio Music Troupe

Ping Pong Affair [NB. “Ping Pong” is printed upside-down and back-to-front, in italics]

The Slits, Palmolive 1979 The Slits (Viviane Albertine,

Up Ari, Tessa Pollitt)

Ping Pong over the Abyss [also title of album]

Mike Proctor Mike Roe

1980 The Seventy Sevens

Spens 81: Fanfare Pesma Šampionata/Championships Song Dovidenja Novi Sad/Goodbye Novi Sad

O Markovic, Z Rambo-sek, D Žgur, M Antic, G

Lendjel, R Tomšic, A Neugebauer

1981 Rudolf Tomšic Pepel in kri Big Band

RTV Novi Sad

Asian Table Tennis Champi-onships Song

V Khoo / R Mulok / T Khoo

The 37th World Table Tennis Championships (Tokyo)

H Miyagawa / A Ito 1983 Shiroi Kaze Voc: I Sasaki

Schmetterball (Dragutin Surbek) Udo Under, Mediaphon 1983 Bottram

Ping Pong for two pianos (“Fast-reacting virtuosi toss the ball to each other, precious little seems pre-arranged.”)

Friedrich Gulda 1984 F Gulda & Chuck Corea (piano),

Concertgebouw Orch. (Amsterdam)

Ping Pong Song Maguire 1987 Alex Maguire, Steve Noble

The Death of Mr Ping Pong David & Don Was 1988 Was (Not Was)

Magic Ball

Reinhard Neumann 1989 Rose Tabesch + Kinderchor +

Army Big Band

Ping Pong

Wayne Shorter 1990 Art Blakey

Ping Pong Progression Greg Jampol 1990s?

Ping-Pong Anthopology The 13th Tribe

Balke, Durand, Pierre Berthet

1991 Erik Balke, Werner Durand

Ping Pong

Thomas William Smith 1992 Tommy Smith Sextet



Ping Pong

Timothy Gane 1994? Mars Audiac Quintet (Tim Gane, Lactitia

Sadier)

Ping-Pong (pour instrument solo)

M Monti

Ping-Pong

Ulrick Neumann U Neumann

Ping Pong for Bach Bugs (Invention No. 14 in B flat major, BWV785)

Bach, Arr. Klaus Netzle

Pierre Favre (drums), Franz Löffler (Guitar)

Ping Pong

Tapin, Miras, Cleveland 1997 Object One

Smashing (World Champion-ships 1999)

E Kwakernaat, W vd Stelt, M Markerink

1999 Musica del Mundo

FVT / Visser Scoort (clublied)

Aat van Rees (en Huib Schippers)

1999 Leo de Bode, Pieter vd

Huller, André de Jager

Dawei 2000—Opening cere-mony—World Team Champi-onships

2000

Magic Ball 2000 (re-recording for EM2000 Bremen)

Reinhard Neumann 2000 Markus Fischer

4th European Veterans Championships: Fanfare Hallo, Bonjour, Good Afternoon

Martin Samsing R & C Samsing

2001 Maria Lucia Rosenberg,

Mathias Sam-sing

Some of the above illustrations are © Racket Sports Heritage Museum. Many thanks to Chuck Hoey for allowing their inclusion.

Ebay—continued from page 3

Miscellaneous

This scoring machine was made by The Scoreking Co., St. Louis, MO. The patent number 2264566 dates it to the 1940s. It is of bakelite con-struction and there are instructions on the back. Auction price a stagger-ing $202.

Pictured left is a beautiful, unusual and rare Christ-mas card by Raphael Tuck, obviously from the early 1900s. It raised $61 for its owner.

Although table tennis was not in the Olympic games in 1936 (as any reader of this journal will know) it did not stop a German manu-facturer from making this (rather ugly, in my opinion) bronze. This particular example came from the widow of the owner of the factory and fetched $102.

Two more not listed in table:


Ivor Montagu - A Personal Recollection

By Gerald Gurney W e all belong not so much to the

era in which we are born as to the era in which we attain maturity; Ivor Montagu belonged to the 1920's, and in his later years carried not only the aura of age but the aura of the period.

When I first met him - at the 1977 World Championships - he was an impressive, if rather ungainly, figure, and we talked for some time of the need for a “history” of table tennis. Previously I had only corresponded with him, in the early 1950's, when he gave strong support to the Oxbridge application for the award of half blues; with his help this was achieved. It was not easy to corre-spond with him; his letters were often so illegible that they needed tran-scription and (in parts at least) de-coding. But he had a fine sense of style - in expression as in everything he touched.

Just two weeks before he died, pro-vided with meticulously careful direc-tions, I visited him at his Hertfordshire home and spent over two hours with him. I had prepared a comprehensive list of questions about the early days of table tennis but, as many readers will appreciate, he was not to be pinned down and he ranged far and wide over many topics, Fred Perry's quickness of eye, Andreadis' back-hand, relations between manage-ment and players, coaching methods, Chinese sporting diplomacy, with a diversion into film-making, particularly his friendship with Charlie Chaplin.

He was in fine form and his qualities as a raconteur were fully apparent, not least in his account of the recent tournament in which he played; he had, he said, “won only three points, all off my knuckles”. When he did, apologetically, return to my questions I asked him whether table tennis would even exist now if it had not been for the initiative taken by Bill Pope and himself in the 1920's re-vival of the game. He replied that it was almost entirely a matter of luck and timing; few inventors in any field deserved any special credit, merely seizing the chance which came their way.

I challenged him rather strongly on his statement (in Table Tennis, 1936) that equipment for the game was first advertised by Ayres Ltd. in 1884. Might not the catalogue entry “Miniature Indoor Lawn Tennis Game” be a reference to indoor lawn tennis played on the floor of the great country houses of the day? In the manner of the true scholar he weighed up all the evidence before concluding that this was indeed pos-sible, even likely.

It is already well known that Ivor Montagu was distinguished in sev-eral, remarkably diverse fields; he

was film producer and critic, political figure, zoologist, author and linguist. Right up to his death his correspon-dence was burdensome but it is a mark of the man that he still found time to reply personally and at length to anyone (including schoolchildren) wanting information on the history of the game.

Table Tennis News takes pleasure in reproducing the original page from the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, December 18, 1926, with a caricature of the President.


The article on page 8 is one which I prepared in November 1984 just after the death of Ivor Montagu; it is reproduced here by permission of the English Table Tennis Association.

Prior to this, I had two or three letters from him on the question of the mysteri-ous Ayres reference of 1884. The famous manufacturer had set up his com-pany, it is believed, in 1878, but no reference to table tennis has been found in his early catalogues (I have one of 1886). The genesis of a sport is, of course, a particularly interesting and important part of its history, and Ivor Montagu’s careful elucidation - not previously published - is well worth revelation here.

Readers may be interested to see a sample of his famous (or infamous) hand-writing and to try deciphering it before turning.to my transliteration. Ivor Mon-tagu himself, as he reveals in The Youngest Son, sometimes had to ask his wife for help with his writing! Some words remain a mystery or are uncertain - indicated-by square brackets.—GNG.

Dear Mr. Gurney,

I apologise for a delay in writing but I have been much tied up the last few weeks.

I am delighted to hear that someone will be doing serious research on the "history" theme.

You have put your finger precisely on a sensitive point. I have myself in recent times been worried about no hard evidence having turned up ei-ther in my memory or from any other source. I certainly did not invent this reference, but at this [“dicky”] age (pushing 80) equally certain I cannot remember with certainty where I picked it up.

My best recollection (but certainly not reliable) is that I may have picked something up from a reference (or advertisement) in one of the nine-teenth century books about the game. I definitely remember jumping to the conclusion that it was a form of TT and not a floor game, and the name LT did not put me off because [strung] rackets certainly for TT were in domestic use right up to the 1st. or 2nd. decades of the 20th. century and I had seen them, whereas I had never seen a "miniature" floor game. Later, when I wrote the Arlott piece (in the Oxford Companion to Sports & Games - GNG), doubts struck me but not sufficiently to make me drop the idea. (In a longer treatise I would have referred to them but as no one had questioned the matter between ‘36 and ‘75 it seemed better to re-state it and - if inaccurate - evoke a contradiction than omit it which would leave the matter quiescent). I had in the interim mainly myself pursued the clues as far as Slazengers (with your result) and I think seeking but not finding an ancient salesman at Lilly-whites reputed to have been at Ayres.

As for dating the origin of the game, I think this is hard, and a matter of definition. It is the same as any hu-man technical [innovation], people begin to think of anything more or less simultaneously, and various ver-sions of similar games, similar equip-ment, similar rules – all dissimilar in [detail] but similar basically - begin to turn up all over the place at the same time.

[Ivor Montagu then digresses into the question of who invented the camera, a topic also of special interest to him in view of his long association with film-making.]

Well, what constitutes the invention of TT? The ball, the racket, the table, the rules? I think the answer must be the table. Surely we will never an-swer that. Barter's patent (see Alan Duke's information in previous is-sues - GNG) shows most of the early equipment in genesis, but implies that the table is unquestioned (because already in use and unpat-entable).

[Ivor Montagu refers to the possibility that TT originated at one of the uni-versities - Cambridge?]

And the other story which I have heard from veterans [is] that it origi-nated in bored Anglo-Indian messes

and was played by British officers during rest in the S. African war (at what date?). The […………………..] in messes in India attaches also to one of the ball games (or is it bad-minton) and appears fully authenti-cated (see my article accompanying the postage stamps from the GPO a few years ago). (Yes, badminton as recorded in The Field maga-zine - GNG). But I like the idea (guess of course not proof) of under-graduates taking up a table game idea and taking it into the army better than the other way round. It sounds more plausible.

Circa 1956

Sent by Robin Radford


Günther’s Pins Part 2:

World Championships

(contd.)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia ITTF official

(vr,b)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia Player (vr,b)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia Team leader

(vr,b)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia Delegate

(vr,b)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia

(r,b)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia

(r,b)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia

(r,b)

1965 Ljubljana

Yugoslavia

(r,b)

1967 Stockholm Sweden

Press (vr,b)

1967 Stockholm Sweden Captain (vr,b)

1967 Stockholm Sweden Player?

(r,b)

1967 Stockholm Sweden

(r,n)

1969 Munich

Germany Captain

(vr,b)

1969 Munich

Germany Organizing Ctte

(vr,b)

1969 Munich

Germany Foreign Ctte mem.

(vr,b)

1969 Munich

Germany Player (vr,b)

1969 Munich

Germany

(r,n)

1969 Munich

Germany

(r,n)

Given by the members of the

Japanese delega-tion

(vr,b)

Given by the members of the

Korean delegation

(r,p)

Günther Angenendt shares the sec-ond page of his 130-page catalogue of table tennis pins. This is the sec-ond page on the subject of the World Championships and covers the years 1965 to 1969.

Key:

c = common; uc = uncommon; r = rare; vr = very rare; u = unique.

p = pins (butterflies); n = needles; b = brooches; screw p = screw pins.

The Foroma Wizard Pictured (right) is the Foroma Wizard bat, made in England by John O. Greensmith Ltd., of London. The provisional patent number, stamped on the neck of the bat, was 2908/6737/46.

This particular example has been kindly sent to me by member Dick Frost who writes—”Enclosed is the offensive weapon they called a table tennis bat at the time, probably in the mid-fifties, but I am not sure. I tried it a few times in practice but broke so many balls that it was a liability and in any case it did not improve ball control which the manufacturers had promised.

“There cannot be many around, since I imagine that any player who bought one would have thrown it away in disgust. I find that I cannot throw anything away, and who knows it might become a collectable item in another forty years or so.

“Maybe someone would like to have it in their memorabilia collection and I am open to offers”.

Dick also claims that the bat was endorsed at the time by the legen-dary Richard Bergman. It appears to have been moulded out of a hard plastic.

If you would like to acquire this bat, Dick can be contacted on +44 (0) 1788 810867 or by email at [email protected].

This rare 1936 World Championships pin was recently traded on Ebay and fetched $106. Quite a price for an item so small. I am delighted to re-port that its acquisi-tion provided Günther with a complete set of World Championships pins. Congratulations, Günther.—GT.


Philatelic Pages Please send your contributions for

the philatelic pages to:

Anton Zwiebel Kerkweg 30

9439 PG WITTEVEEN The Netherlands

[email protected] Anton Zwiebel continues his regular contribution about table tennis stamps, post-marks and other items of philatelic interest.


On 24.11.01 the Society of Philately Friends Netphen in Germany introduced their latest cancellation. The cover included a chronological list of table tennis facts. The English translation is reproduced left. [Anton included this item in his contribution, but I have used a scan of the original cover kindly sent to me by Winfried Engelbrecht who also sent me the English translations—Ed.]

1869 J.W. Hyatt invented celluloid in the USA.

1878 First appearance of the term Ping-Pong on an English postcard.

1891 James Gibb, England, used small American toy celluloid table tennis balls for the first time.

1896 The Schildkröt Company, Mannheim, invented the blow-press method for making high-quality cel-luloid table tennis balls.

1902 First draft of general current table tennis rules.

1907 First national German TT championships held in Berlin.

1926 First World TT Championships held in London.

1958 First European TT Champion-ships held in Budapest.

1988 Table tennis competitions at the Olympic Games (Seoul) for the first time.

2000 New ball diameter 40mm.

2001 A set is finished by 11 winning points. In German team competi-tions the match is finished on reach-ing the 3rd set won.

Part of a special cover to let us know that the Chinese delegation to Sydney flew Air China to get to Australia. A second cover (almost, but not quite) similar tells us that the Hong Kong delegation flew Cathay Pacific. It makes life so much easier to know that now you do not have to blame your local airline when you hear that the Hong Kong players complained about the service in their flight home.


Mozambique also honoured the Sydney Olympics with this issue in the year 2001.

Pictures at 50%. All these issues are also printed imperforated.

Every resemblance with earlier issues from Guiné-Bissau is pure coincidence!

From Guiné-Bissau comes another issue. Two colourful pic-tures at the occasion of the World Championships 2001 in Osaka, Japan. Also issued imperforated. Of course, one might say! Printed at 100%.

13.10.9 handstamp in black at the 14th Games for the Disabled Hiroshima/Mihara.

Enlarged — finals 2nd Nat iona l Fa rmers ’ Sports Games in the Province of Hubei.


Shown at 50%. Block at the occasion of the Mediterra-nean Games 2001, held in Tunisia. Pictogram upper row 3rd from left is table tennis.

Guine-Bissau issued 2 blocks to commemorate the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Only the block on green front contains table tennis. Also shown at 50%.

From Hungary comes this vignet. Shown at 50%. My translation does not go further than “50 years table tennis in Budapest”. Can any-one help with the remainder?

Updates to previous articles:

In Collector no. 27 bottom page 12 a Tadjikistan stamp was shown. This com-plete sheet of 9 stamps, 4 of which related to table tennis, shows posters an-nouncing major sporting events.

In Collector no. 26 page 11 the North Korea issue of 07.07.2000 is shown. There is also a small block of 2 stamps of each of the 3 sports.

In Collector no. 23 page 11 top left the 1999 Tadjikistan 4-stamps Old Sports sheetlet was shown. This sheetlet is also available imperforated.

For the information in these philatelic pages I thank Mrs. Käthe Barth and Mr. Bob Op de Beeck. They sent me most welcome extra information. From other countries, still no information at all.—AZ.

Philatelic pages compiled by Anton Zwiebel

S tephen Kelen was born in Buda-pest where he went to school,

played table tennis and had poems, short stories and articles published in leading Hungarian papers from the age of seventeen. After matriculating he was awarded a scholarship to the Czech language Karlovo University in Prague. Condition: while studying for a Ph.D. he coached the university team. He played in national and world TT championships which en-abled him to travel in Western Europe including Britain.

In 1937, with his playing partner, Mi-chael Szabados, (they were both world champions), he was invited to come to Australia to play in the Aus-tralian Championships and to give exhibitions around the country. (He was within months of his final exams, which he did not return to take.) After leaving Australia they travelled in New Zealand, Japan, China, The Philippines, Vietnam (French In-do-China), The Malay States (Singapore and Malaya), South Af-rica, South America, India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) The Dutch East In-dies (now Indonesia), South Africa and Tristan da Cunha. They returned to Australia in 1939, just before the war broke out.

He volunteered and served in the Australian army for seven years, in Australia, in New Guinea, the Hal-maheras, North Borneo then in BCOF (British Commonwealth Occu-pation Force, part of the Allied Occu-pation Force in post-war Japan). In Japan he transferred from Intelli-gence to BCON (British Common-wealth Occupation News) where he was a feature writer, in Osaka and in charge alternately of the newspaper's Kure and Tokyo bureaux.

He was discharged from the army in 1949 and in 1951 married a Sydney secondary school art teacher, Sylvia Steuart. They have two sons, both writers. Back in civilian life he worked as a freelance writer for some years. At the time daily newspapers published short stories and Kelen had many published nationwide as well as in various magazines. There were also book reviews for literary pages, and feature articles, news commentaries. He became well known for the many documentaries that he wrote for broadcast on the

Kelen

From the Editor,

I have to confess that philately is one subject that I do not collect (or know much about) although I know that a sizeable part of the Society’s membership does. Therefore I urge all members with philatelic interests to support Anton with contributions to this important part of the Journal.

Thanks.—GT.


ABC, including a series of dramatised book reviews - each review included dramatised segments from the book, designed to interest the listener in reading Australian novels. Many of his articles and stories were pub-lished or broadcast overseas in Eng-lish speaking countries and, in trans-lation, in several European, South American and Asian countries. Oc-casionally he took temporary jobs as relieving editor or as an advertising copywriter.

Immediately following the Hungarian Revolution, in 1956, he interviewed several of the refugees who man-aged to reach Sydney. He selected five of their stories and wrote them up in novel form, 'faction', true stories with the names changed for obvious reasons. One of these, Freedom is a Rainbow, was published in serial form in The Bulletin (Sydney) and The Illustrated Weekly of India. The manuscript of the five stories won second prize in a worldwide contest run for Refugee Year by the USA Committee For Refugees in conjunc-tion with the publisher Doubleday.

He was Managing Editor of Goodyear (rubber) Australia Publications for 17 years from 1960. He has had seven books published in Australia; the most recent: 1 Remember Hiroshima, (Hale and Iremonger) launched in 1983. Since then he has spent most of his time working on his autobiogra-

- Life After Table Tennis

phy and an occasional short story. His membership of the Australian Journalists' Association dates from before World War 2. He has been a member of the Australian Society of Authors since the early days of the Society. A Life Member of the Syd-ney Centre of International PEN, was

its president from 1975 to 1985. In 1986 he was awarded an OAM (Order of Australia Medal) for service to Literature. In 1993 he was en-shrined in the International Table Tennis Hall of Fame and in 1994 awarded the Champion of Hungary Forever Medal.

Keith Bowler has sent this autobiographical article by Stephen Kelen, one of the all-conquering Hungarian team of the 1930s, and who later settled in Australia and became a famous writer. However, Kelen’s writing seems not to always have endeared itself to the reader. I have a copy of his 1936 book Success at Table Tennis and pasted inside my copy is a letter from Gilbert Marshall, the American international who lived in London. In the letter, which is dated 20th March 1937, Marshall writes “I have managed to obtain a copy of Kelen’s book, which inci-dentally I consider is almost the worst ever written on the game”! Who is the Bill that Marshall is corresponding with? — GT.

Published by Graham Trimming on behalf of the Table Tennis Collectors’ Society, July 2002 17 Gwendale, Pinkneys Green, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 6SH, England Tel: +44 (0)1628 636978; email: [email protected] © Graham Trimming—no part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the publisher.


Postcards from the World Championships From Hans-Peter Trautmann

Peter has also sent a very interesting card from the 1926 World Champion-ships which I am holding back for an article about the first World event.—GT.

Year: 1948 London (England)

Sender: Zedenek Heydusek : President of the Czechoslokian Table Tennis Association

Recipient: Anton Malecek : Czech Swaythling Cup winner 1932

Signed by: Bohumil Vana (CZE) : (MT Champ, MS r/u, MD champ) Ladislav Stipek (CZE) : (MT champ, MD champ) Ivan Andreadis (CZE) : (MT champ) Marie Kettnerova (CZE) : (former WS champ) Vlasta Depetrisova (CZE) : (former WD champ)

Year: 1953 Bucharest (Rumania)

This postcard is franked by the special 55 Bani stamps created for the 1953 World Table Tennis Championships.

Recipient: Hanno Company, Osnabruck (manufacturer of table tennis items)

Signed by:

Ferenc Sido (HUN) : (MS champ, MD Champ, XD champ) Jozsef Koczian (HUN) : (MD champ) Zarko Dolinar (YUG) : (future MD champ) Vilim Harangozo (YUG) : (future MD champ)

Year: 1955 Utrecht (Netherlands)

Signed by:

Ivan Andreadis (CZE) : (MD champ) Ladislav Stipek (CZE) : (MD champ) Bohumil Vana (CZE) : (former MS champ) Adolf Slar (CZE) : (XD bronze, former MD champ) Frau Krejcova (CZE) : (XD bronze)

Documents

THE TABLE TENNIS - Graham Trimming Tennis Collector 29.pdf · THE TABLE TENNIS The Journal of the Table Tennis Collectors’ Society 29 Summer 2002 In this issue… · Update to membership