The first dart boards were made of wood, specifically elm wood. These boards were soaked in water overnight to stop them splitting. This was a bit of a chore to say the least. It stayed this way until the 1930's when a model clay manufacturer made a dart board out of plasticine. No really, the company was called Nodor so called because the modelling clay they produced was "odour free" or no odour. Not too surprisingly, the board was not a great success, but they were approached by a guy who had an idea to make a dart board out of rope to make the first "Bristle" board. This was not as daft an idea as you might think, although how he came up with it is a mystery. Note contrary to some stories going around at the time the boards were never made from pigs bristles. The principle was simple, bind together some small lengths of string and then put lots and lots of them together and compress them with a steel ring and hey presto you have the first sisal dart board also known as a bristle board. The beauty of the board is that when the dart hits the board it parts the strands of sisal so creating minimal damage to the board so the sisal board has good longevity with the added benefit of no soaking overnight!

Nodor got a patent for the design and so were the only manufacturer for 25 years or so for the life of the patent. After the patent expired other manufacturers entered the arena most notably Winmau . And you thought Nodor was a funny name. Apparently the name Winmau was made up from the first three letters of the two names of the wife of the company director "Winifred Maud" hence Winmau.

Winmau and Nodor fought for supremacy in the dart board market for many years until Nodor eventually took over the Winmau brand. The two companies vied with each other to produce better dart boards with Winmau producing their Blade board and Nodor their staple free bulls eye board.

The bristle boards were used in all the big tournaments that started in the 70's and are still used today in the prestigious tournaments like the Las Vegas classic and the British Lakeside tournament.

Then came Electronics, the electronic dart board came on the scene and changed the game overnight. The odd thing about electronic boards is they are covered in hundreds of small holes for the special soft tip darts to enter. At first glance you think how can the dart get into those holes so exactly? The holes are centered at the base of a dimple like the dimples of a golf ball, guiding the soft tip darts to the holes in the board. And it works very well with nowhere near the amount of bounce outs you might expect. There are sensors beneath the holes which trigger the electronics to record the score and deducts or adds the score to the previous one automatically, depending on the game. This was a great boon to darters as they no longer had to keep score and the boards could be networked to collect all the scores from the boards on a computer, great for tournaments.

The difference with the electronic dart board are that you have to use soft tip darts, and the tips are made of plastic so as not to damage the board. (Never use normal steel tip darts on an electronic board) Also the maximum weight of dart allowed on most electronic dart boards is 20 grams.

You can now have the best of both the steel tip and soft tip game now with the introduction of the new BristleTech boards which have bristle type fibres that can take the steel tips as well as the soft tipped darts and still work with the electronics. The Bristletech technology is set to dominate the dart board market in the future.

The archers of old would marvel at how their game has developed and I'm sure there is more to come, especially with the development of Bristle type boards combined with electronics. The electronic game is popular in both Europe and the US and who knows, the big tournaments like the Las Vegas classic may go that way too.