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William A. Spinks
William A. Spinks in 1924 (passport photo from Dept. of State microfilm)
Born	July 11, 1865, San Jose, California
Died	January 15, 1933 (aged 67), Monrovia, California
Residence	Brooklyn, New York; Cincinnati, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; and San Jose, San Francisco, Duarte and Monrovia, California
Nationality	United States
Other names	W. A. Spinks, Billy Spinks
Ethnicity	White
Occupation	Billiards player, inventor, sporting goods manufacturer, oil company investor/director, farmer/horticuluralist
Years active	ca. 1893 – 1920s
Known for	Co-invention of billiard chalk, balkline billiards world record, the Spinks avocado cultivar
Signature

William Alexander Spinks Jr. (1865–1933), known professionally as William A. Spinks or (in the initialing practice common in his era) W. A. Spinks, and rarely also referred to as Billy Spinks^{citation needed}), was an American professional carom billiards player in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to being amateur Pacific Coast billiards champion several times,¹² a world champion contender in more than one cue sports discipline,³ and an exhibition player in Europe,⁴ he became the co-inventor (with William Hoskins) in 1897 of modern billiard chalk.⁴⁵ He was originally (and again in retirement from the billiards circuit) a Californian, but spent much of his professional career in Chicago, Illinois.¹⁴ At his peak, the New York Times labeled Spinks "[one] of the most brilliant players among the veterans of the game",⁶ and he still holds the world record for points scored in a row (1,010) using a particular shot type.⁷ Aside from his billiards playing career, he founded a sporting goods manufacturing business, and was both a petroleum company investor and director, and a flower and avocado farmer and horticulturist, originator of the eponymous Spinks avocado cultivar.

As an inventor (1892–1897)

The top of a box of a dozen cubes of Spinks billiard chalk, ca. 1900–1910. Note the endorsement by World Champion Jacob Schaefer Sr., often Spinks's opponent as a touring pro.

While Spinks was a world-class player, his lasting contribution to cue sports was the innovations he brought to the game and the industry resulting from his fascination with the abrasives used by players on the leather tips of their cue sticks.

Cue "chalk" (used since at least 1807) helps the tip better grip the cue ball (very briefly) on a stroke and prevent miscueing, as well as permitting the player to impart a great deal more spin to the ball, vital for position play and for spin-intensive shots such as massés. In the 1800s, actual chalk (generally calcium carbonate lumps, suspended from strings), and even plaster was often used, but players experimented with other powdery, abrasive substances,^{7:46 1} since true chalk had a deleterious effect on the game equipment, not only discoloring the billiard cloth but actually causing the fabric to rot.⁸

In 1892, Spinks was particularly impressed by a piece of natural chalk-like substance obtained in France, and presented it to chemist and electrical engineer William Hoskins (1862–1934)⁹ of Chicago for analysis, who determined that it was porous volcanic rock (pumice) originally probably from Mount Etna, Sicily. Using the rock as a starting place, the two experimented together with different formulations of various materials to achieve the cue ball "action" that Spinks sought.⁴

They finally honed in on a mixture of Illinois-sourced⁴ silica and the abrasive substance corundum or aloxite⁵ (a form of aluminum oxide, Al₂O₃),¹⁰¹¹¹² founding William A. Spinks & Company with a factory¹ in Chicago⁴ after securing a patent on March 9, 1897.⁵ Spinks himself later left the company as an active party, which retained his name and was subsequently run by Hoskins, and later by Hoskins's cousin⁴ Edmund F. Hoskin,¹³ after Hoskins moved on to other projects.

While regular calcium carbonate chalk had been packaged and marketed on a local scale by various parties (English player Jack Carr's "Twisting Powder" of the 1820s being the earliest recorded example, although considered dubious by some billiards researchers),^7:46 the Spinks Company product (which is still emulated by modern manufacturers today with differing, proprietary compounds)^7:46 effectively revolutionized billiards.^{citation needed} The modern product provided a cue tip friction enhancer that allowed the tip to better grip the cue ball briefly⁵ and impart a previously unattainable amount of spin on the ball, which consequently allowed more precise and extreme cue ball control, made miscueing less likely, made curve and massé shots more plausible, and ultimately spawned the new cue sport of artistic billiards. Even the basic draw and follow shots of pool games (like eight-ball and nine-ball) depend heavily on the effects and properties of modern billiard "chalk".

Spinks made a "fortune"¹²¹⁴ from his co-invention and the company that sold it to the world.

As a player

Spinks was a formidable specialist and professional competitor in straight rail billiards (early on), and balkline billiards (arguably the most difficult of all cue sports aside from artistic billiards), especially 14.2 and later 18.2 balkline, and skilled enough at the even more difficult 18.1 variant to hold his own against World Champions.

1890s: Rise as a professional contender

He began his competitive professional playing career in Brooklyn, New York,¹⁵ ca. 1893.¹⁶

An extreme massé shot by Spinks during an 1893 exhibition game against Jacob Schaefer Sr. Starting from bottom left, his cue ball swerves into and caroms off one object ball, then due to its extreme spin rebounds into the cushion four times before finally rolling away for a perfect, scoring hit on the other ball. And Spinks actually lost this game.

On December 19, 1893 in Brooklyn, Spinks played in an exhibition that also featured the great Maurice Daly and young champion Frank Ives, and gave demonstrations of fancy massé shots. He also played a 14.2 balkline match against World Champion Jacob Schaefer Sr.; Schaefer won, 250–162, with a high run and average of 88 and 20 (respectively) to Spinks's 33 and 13.¹⁵

In 1894, he was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in January of that year offered a convoluted challenge to veteran cueist Edward McLaughlin of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to play him either a single 14.2 match to 600 points for US$500 each (a substantial amount of money in that period for someone to put up personally on a bet – approximately $11,400 in 2007 dollars)¹⁷ in New York, or one in New York and one in Philadelphia, or one in Cincinnati and one in Philadelphia, whatever McLaughlin preferred, and even offered to pay travel expenses to Cincinnati.¹⁸

Spinks issued an even more curious challenge in November 1894, to play 14.2 balkline against (almost) any challenger to 600 points for a $1,000 pot again, and while including French champion Edward Fournil, the bet specifically excluded the top-three names in that era of the sport, namely Shaefer, Ives and George Franklin Slosson.¹⁹ The challenge was accepted by well-known Chicago pro Thomas Gallagher (in a match that future champion Ora Morningstar traveled all the way to Chicago to see).²⁰²¹

Spinks was apparently not a fan of upstart cueist Ives in particular. Days after issuing his caveat-laden challenge, Spinks was described by an onlooking journalist as "very uneasy until the seventeenth inning" as a spectator at the 14.2 balkline World Champion challenge match between Ives and incumbent Schaefer; the latter's point total had been trailing, sometimes badly, in all sixteen previous innings until he rallied in the final one of the game.²² Spinks, along with Gallagher, even helped Schaefer train in 14.2 for another match against Ives, in October of that year; though Spinks lost this practice match 600–369 (averages 23 vs. 14), he had a high run of 109, to Schaefer's 102 (and Gallagher's 157 total).²³

Spinks was reported in the press in 1895 to be specifically desired as a competitor in an upcoming seven-man invitational tournament for "second class" professional players (i.e., not the top 3), organized by Daly, and with as much as $1,200 (approx. $28,400 in 2007 dollars)¹⁷ added. ²⁴

Spinks had moved to Chicago by 1896,²⁵ and was perfecting his billiard chalk with Hoskins. That year he was noted for besting McLaughlin at 14.2 by a comfortable 2500–2300 margin (with averages of 11 vs. 10) in a five-evening, $250 (approx. $6150, in 2007 dollars)¹⁷ 14.2 match, December 8–12, in Slosson's New York City billiard hall. At one point he had trailed rather badly, 1500–1880, after McLaughlin pulled off a stunning run of 140 (Spinks's highest recorded run of the match was 69).^262327282930

By 1897, the year of the launch of Spinks & Company, he had evidently overcome his seeming reluctance to face World Champions again (perhaps from having several years' experience with his own product prototypes). Spinks competed in (but did not win) a December 3 open tournament.³¹

The next month in New York City, a January 15–21, 1898 double-elimination, five-man invitational 18.2 balkline tournament was arranged, again in Chicago. It was a handicapped event, featuring the five top players from the previous event – Schaefer and Ives, as World Champions, had to reach 600 points to Spinks's, William Catton's and George Sutton's 260.³² Without having to rely on the 600-point handicap, Spinks beat Schaefer flat-out, 260–139 (with a high run of 48 vs. Schaefer's 38) in his January 18 second game.³³ Spinks (with a high run of "only" 44) was himself defeated in a very close 249–260 third game a day later by Catton (high run 56) – by way of comparison, the same night Ives trounced Sutton by a whopping 400–160.³⁴ By January 20, Spinks seemed to be running out of steam, as Sutton took him 260–118, (high runs 73 vs. 30), ³⁵ and he lost again 154–400 (with another high run of 44) to Ives a day later. (In Spinks's defense, he not only did better against Ives than Catton had, but Ives also had a very impressive high run of 136, making it virtually impossible to catch up.) This loss put Spinks out of the tournament at 4th place.³⁶

1900s: World-class competitor

Spinks was still considered a newsworthy contender over a decade later, for the World 18.2 Balkline Championship of 1909, being enumerated in "a fine list of entries" anticipated for the March event.³⁷

On January 11, Spinks (with a high run of 51) beat former amateur champion and then-pro Calvin Demarest, 250–199, in only 15 innings, despite scoring 0 points in 4 innings and only 1 point in another, by building several solid runs in the innings in which things went his way. For all intents and purposes it was a 10-inning win.³⁸ Demarest took his revenge only days later, defeating Spinks in a close 250–225, 23-inning game on January 13, despite Spinks's high run of 78 (his highest 18.2 run on record in publicly-available sources, and considerably higher than Demarest's 52 that night).³⁹ Spinks lost to him again the very next day, 175–250, in an exhibition game, despite Spinks's solid high run of 69, and also beat veteran pro Tom Gallagher.^6clarify

In January 1909, just prior to an 18.1 balkline championship at Madison Square Garden (in which Spinks was not competing), he and Mauricy Daly were observed playing practice games with Sutton for the latter's pre-event training, in Daly's billiard hall in New York City, on multiple occasions over a several-day stretch. While Spinks lost all but one of the recorded matches of this series, one loss was by a hair, at 400–399, another was 400–370, and his victory was a surprising 300–194 – and 18.1 was not his preferred game.^4041424344

Many articles of the era stress that Spinks was a Californian, because during this period American billiards was completely dominated by East-Coasters and a few Midwesterners.³

1910s: Setting a record and leveling the field

Spinks was noted in 1912 for a still-unbroken world record run of 1,010 continuous points at 18.2 balkline using the "chuck nurse" (a form of nurse shot), and could have made more, but stopped,^{7:52, 289 2} before anchor space rules were instituted especially to curtail the effectiveness of the chuck nurse.^{7:8 45} The use of such repetitive, predictable shots by Spinks, Schaefer Sr. and their contemporaries led to the development of the more advanced and restrictive 14.1 balkline rules (invented in 1907, but not played professionally until 1914), which further thwarted the ease of reliance on nurse shots than the older balkline games already did.^7:15-16

In August 1915, Spinks was tapped to join a consultative panel of notable players and major billiard hall proprietors to help develop a new handicapping system for balkline billiards, organized by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, at that time the organizers of the World Championships. The inspiration for the new system was simply making it possible for the newly ascendant Willie Hoppe to be meaningfully challenged (his near-unassailability was hurting billiard tournament revenues, because the outcome was considered foreordained by many potential ticket-buyers), although the system was expected to level the playing field in other ways, especially making it easier for skilled amateurs to enter the professional ranks.⁴⁶

As an oilman

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (August 2008)

Spinks described himself as a director of an oil company as of 1900.⁴⁷¹ He invested money from his billiard equipment corporation in the petroleum industry in California.^{citation needed}

As a farmer

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (August 2008)

While Spinks was not operating a farm as of 1900,⁴⁷ he described himself as a flower farmer (among other such specialists in the area) in 1910,⁴⁸ and an avocado "rancher" by 1920.⁴⁹¹ As a pomology horticulturist, he developed the Spinks avocado cultivar.^{citation needed} As a floriculurist, he made no known major contributions.

Private life

William A. Spinks Jr., the youngest of five children, was born July 11, 1865 in the then-small township of San Jose, California, to struggling farmer William A. and wife Cynthia J. (Prather) Spinks. He had blue eyes, dark hair and a ruddy complexion, and was 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall by adulthood.^50515253 Nothing is known of his education.

William and Clara Spinks in 1922

On September 1, 1891 he married Clara Alexandria Karlson (b. December 12, 1871, Gothenburg, Sweden, immigrated 1872; d. October 4, 1949, Los Angeles); they were to remain together for over 40 years. They returned to California from Chicago before the turn of the century. After a period in a San Francisco apartment (ca. 1900), they lived in the (then-rural) L.A. suburbs of Duarte (ca. 1910) where their farm was, and later (by 1920) Monrovia, where they maintained a modest house in addition to the farm. After William's business success, the couple became extensive world travelers.^474849545551

William Spinks died January 15, 1933, aged 67, in Monrovia.¹²

The Los Angeles County valley Spinks Canyon, its stream Spinks Canyon Creek, and the local major thoroughfare Spinks Canyon Road (running through Duarte and Bradbury), are named after William Spinks,⁵⁶ who would probably be surprised that homes in the area can fetch over $1mil; his house in nearby Monrovia was valued at only $6,000 ($72,000 in 2007 dollars)¹⁷ in 1930.⁵⁴

References