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Apr 19
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The Evolution of the Game of TagSports Comments Off
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Believe it or not, paintball was essentially invented when a group of twelve friends decided to up the stakes in a “Capture the Flag” game in 1981. The guys grabbed a paintball marker that was previously used to mark trees. The game was such a success for them that they bought into a tree-marking gun manufacturer called Nelson. A year later, the first paintball field was opened in Rochester, New York. Robert G. Shepherd designed the first gun designed especially for playing paintball in 1985.
These first games of paintball were played with no masks or safety equipment of any kind! They were played indoors or outdoors, with rules of the game gradually evolving. As the rules evolved, so did the equipment. As more and more people became interested in the sport, companies and commercial fields were pressed to come up with new and exciting ideas.
The first professional paintball tournament took place just two years after the invention of the game. Today, we have the National Paintball Professional League, which was formed in 1992. The major tournaments around the world draw huge sponsorships and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of prizes.
There are now literally hundreds of types of guns, both mechanical and electronic. The paintballs can be fed by an electric hopper or a gravity fed hopper. The possibilities are truly endless and can run upwards of a hundred and thirty dollars.
With advancements in paintball guns have come increases in speed, which means that the safety equipment has undergone several transformations as well. Now that the paintballs can reach speeds of over two hundred miles per hour, it’s a really good idea to have a mask that covers the whole head and protective equipment for other parts of your body.