Paintball History
Paintball history had a rather strange start for a sport. This was because the original idea had nothing at all to do with sports or competition.
In the 1950’s, the Nelson Paint Company began manufacturing a product designed to be used by the Forestry Service to mark trees from a distance. The product was a capsule filled with paint that was shot from a gun using compressed CO2. The paint marking device was all used by ranchers to mark cattle. This product was manufactured and sold by the Nelson Paint Company for a couple of decades fulfilling its rather limited function. Paintball history, as the history of an extreme sport began with the idea of three friends.
Three men, Hayes Noel, Bob Guernsey, and Charles Gaines were discussing Gaines’ hunting trip to Africa and Richard Connell’s book “The Most Dangerous Game.” This book was about men hunting each other for sport, and the idea intrigued the three friends. They began to find some way to do this in a game form where they could experience the adrenalin rush, but no one would be hurt. A fourth friend showed them the paint marker guns in a catalogue and the idea of Paintball was born.
The first Paintball game was played on an 80 acre wooden cross country skiing course on June 27, 1981. It was a game of capture the flag and the players used Nelspot 007 marker guns from the Nelson Paint Company. Before long they had created a game that they called Survival. The game was featured in an issue of Sports Illustrated and was led to a sudden increase in popularity. Bob Guernsey, one of the original inventors of the game formed a company called The National Survival Game Company and entered into a contract with the Nelson Paint Company.
These early games were played much differently than today’s version of Paintball. The play areas were much bigger and each player had a limited amount of paint capsules which meant much stalking and very little shooting. The paint in the capsules was not water soluble and left quite a mess in the play area. There were often what became known as “turpentine parties” to clean up after games.
In a few years, rival companies began to develop new technology and produce new products intended for Paintball. The Splatmaster was introduced in 1985. It was the first marker gun intended specifically for Paintball. A man named George Skogg came up with the modern gelatin water soluble capsule and provided the formula to the Nelson Paint Company who began producing them just for Paintball games. The sport took off from this point and grew to its current popularity. Today, there are over 11.4 million Paintball players in the United States.