Volleyball was originally called "mintonette" and was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan. It was created for businessmen as a game that involved less physical contact. The sport was designed from a combination of basketball, baseball, tennis and handball.
The Original Rules:
~Called for a net 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) high, a 25×50 ft (7.6×15.2 m) court
~Any number of players
~A match was composed of nine innings with three serves for each team in each inning
~No limit to the number of ball contacts for each team before sending the ball to the opponents’ court. In case of a serving error, a second try was allowed
~Hitting the ball into the net was considered a foul (with loss of the point or a side-out)—except in the case of the first-try serve.
The first exhibition match in 1896 was played at the International YMCA Training School at Springfield College, and after that rules were slightly modified and it spread across the country. There was some dispute over what year the official ball had been used created by Spalding. It was between the years of 1896-1900. The sport of volleyball was spreading rapidly and the next country outside the United States to adopt volleyball was Canada in 1900. It became popular and by the mid 1900's the first World Championships were held in 1949 for men and 1952 for women. The sport is now popular in Brazil, Europe such as Italy, the Netherlands,and countries from Eastern Europe, in Russia, China and the rest of Asia. After normal indoor volleyball had gotten big, the ideas of beach volleyball and even Olympic volleyball had emerged in the late 1900's.
It is known as one of the most well-loved sports in the world currently, and it is amazing how much the game has changed and how much work was put into to make it so successful.
