TL;DR: American football evolved from soccer and rugby into its own game between 1869 and the early 1900s, when rule changes and equipment patents defined the sport we watch today. In 1939, inventor Wilton Reach patented a new football lacing structure that made the ball easier to grip -- the same design principle used on every NFL game ball. Original prints of that patent are available framed or unframed.
The first football game in American history was played on November 6, 1869, between Rutgers and Princeton. There were 25 players on each side, no forward passes, and the ball was round. Players could not pick it up. The game looked nothing like football today -- it looked like a rough, chaotic version of soccer played in a muddy field in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers won 6-4.
That game, and the long evolution that followed it, is the story of how a sport assembled itself piece by piece from borrowed rules, violent experimentation, and the occasional catastrophe that forced fundamental changes. By the time Wilton Reach filed his 1939 patent for a new football lacing design, the sport had already survived a presidential threat to abolish it entirely.
The Rutgers-Princeton Game and the Birth of Collegiate Football
When Rutgers and Princeton met in 1869, they were not playing football in any modern sense. The rules resembled Association Football -- what the world calls soccer -- more than the game that fills American stadiums today. The ball could be kicked or batted. Running with it was not permitted. The objective was to drive it through the opponent's goal.
Despite the game's primitive form, it proved popular enough to inspire a follow-up. Princeton hosted the rematch the following week, won 8-0 under rules slightly more favorable to their style, and the idea of intercollegiate competition took root. Other colleges began fielding teams. In 1873, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers met to standardize the rules so different schools could play each other under the same framework.
Harvard declined to attend. They were playing a different version of the game -- one more closely resembling rugby, where players could pick up the ball and run with it. Harvard considered their game superior and wanted no part of the soccer-like rules the other four schools were adopting.
The Rugby Influence and Walter Camp's Reforms
Harvard's rugby-style game would eventually win. In 1875, Harvard and Yale met on the field, with Yale agreeing to play under Harvard's preferred rules. Yale came away from the game convinced that running with the ball made the sport better. Princeton observers watched and agreed. The four major schools reconvened and adopted a hybrid set of rules that allowed players to carry the ball, moving American football decisively away from soccer and toward rugby.
The transformation continued rapidly. In 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia founded the Intercollegiate Football Association and adopted rules even closer to Rugby Football Union standards. The sport still featured scrums, line-outs, and a fluid game without downs or possession rules. But the shape was changing.
The figure most responsible for converting rugby into American football was Walter Camp, a Yale player and coach who began pushing rule changes in 1880. Camp replaced the rugby scrum with a line of scrimmage and introduced the snap from center to quarterback, giving one team defined possession of the ball. In 1882, he added the down system: a team had to advance the ball five yards in three downs or surrender possession. The game now had structure, strategy, and a clock on every play.
Camp also standardized the scoring system. By the 1880s, touchdowns and field goals were worth defined point values, and the game had a recognizable architecture. Camp is often called the father of American football, and the designation is accurate: the game he designed at Yale is the direct ancestor of what the NFL plays today.
The 1905 Crisis and the Forward Pass
American football in the late 19th century was extraordinarily violent. Mass formations -- plays where the entire offensive line pushed forward in a wedge against the defense -- produced crushing collisions that frequently caused serious injury. The game was played without helmets, with minimal padding, on hard ground. Deaths were not rare.
By 1905, the crisis had become impossible to ignore. Newspaper reports documented 19 football deaths in a single year. President Theodore Roosevelt, himself an advocate of physical activity and rugged sport, called representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to the White House. He threatened federal action if the game did not reform itself.
The resulting emergency meeting of college representatives in December 1905 produced the Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which became the NCAA in 1910. More importantly, it produced rule changes that altered the nature of the game. The most significant: the legalization of the forward pass in 1906.
The forward pass opened the field. Instead of massed collisions at the line of scrimmage, teams could now spread defenders with the threat of a thrown ball. Scoring was adjusted in the years that followed: three points for a field goal, six for a touchdown. The game became faster, more strategic, and considerably safer than the formation football that had been killing players. These changes were not minor refinements. They were the structural redesign that made modern football possible.
The Rise of Professional Football and the NFL
College football dominated the sport through the early 20th century. Professional football existed in pockets, particularly in Ohio and western Pennsylvania, where small-town teams paid players under the table while maintaining a fiction of amateurism. The American Professional Football Association was formed in 1920, with Jim Thorpe as its first president. Two years later, it renamed itself the National Football League.
The early NFL was a loose collection of small-market teams -- the Decatur Staleys, the Rock Island Independents, the Canton Bulldogs -- playing before modest crowds in minor cities. The league was fragile and frequently reorganized as franchises folded. The Green Bay Packers, founded in 1919 and admitted to the league in 1921, are the only franchise from that era still playing in its original city.
The NFL gained legitimacy slowly. Radio broadcasts brought the game to national audiences in the 1930s. By the end of the decade, the league had enough stability and commercial interest to attract serious equipment innovation, including the patent that sits at the center of this story.
Wilton Reach's 1939 Football Patent
In 1939, Wilton Reach of Springfield, Massachusetts was granted a patent for a new football design. The innovation was focused on the lacing structure and the construction process used to manufacture the ball -- the part of the football that a quarterback grips, that a receiver reads when catching on the run, and that a punter positions for foot contact.
The laces on a football are not decorative. They exist because the ball was originally inflated through a rubber bladder covered in leather panels, and the laces sealed the opening while also providing texture for grip. As the game evolved and the forward pass became central to the sport, the grip and feel of the lacing became critically important. A quarterback throwing under pressure needs to find the laces by touch, in under two seconds, before a defensive end arrives.
Reach's patent addressed the geometry of this system: how the panels were cut and assembled, how the laces were threaded and seated, and how the construction process produced a consistent and controllable surface. His design made the ball easier to grip and more consistent in its behavior. Reach was a prolific inventor who also held patents in golf equipment, but this football design became part of the ongoing engineering tradition of a sport that was, by 1939, approaching the mainstream.
The NFL would not hold its first televised game until 1939, the same year Reach filed his patent. The sport was on the verge of the transformation that would eventually make it the most watched game in America. The equipment that players handled during that transformation was shaped by patents like Reach's -- specific, technical, and almost entirely unknown to the fans who filled the stadiums.
Football Becomes America's Game
The post-World War II era brought professional football its largest audience yet. Television changed everything. The 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants, played in overtime at Yankee Stadium, is often called "the greatest game ever played." It was broadcast nationally and demonstrated that professional football was made for television in a way that baseball, with its static camera angle and slow pace, was not.
The AFL-NFL merger in 1970 consolidated professional football into a single league. The Super Bowl, first played in 1967, became the most-watched annual television event in the United States. By the early 21st century, the NFL was generating more than $10 billion in annual revenue and commanding the largest television rights deals in sports history.
The ball at the center of all of it -- the specific shape, the lacing structure, the leather panels -- was the product of more than a century of evolution from that round object kicked around a field in New Jersey in 1869. Wilton Reach's 1939 patent is one document in that chain, a specific engineering solution to a specific problem that every quarterback who has ever gripped a spiral has benefited from without knowing his name.
Shop Football Patent Art Prints
The original U.S. Patent Office drawing that defined the football. Starting at $49.99 unframed.
Football (1939), Wilton Reach
Reach's 1939 patent captured the lacing structure and construction process that made the football easier to grip and control -- the design principle behind every game ball thrown in the NFL. The drawing shows the precise geometry of the panels and lacing that quarterbacks and receivers rely on without thinking about it. A clean, recognizable piece of American sports history that works in a sports room, a home office, or as a gift for any football fan who would never think to hang a jersey on the wall.
Best for: Football fans, sports history enthusiasts, home office or den decor
Frequently Asked Questions
When was the first American football game played?
The first American football game was played on November 6, 1869, between Rutgers and Princeton. The game bore little resemblance to modern football -- it used a round ball, had 25 players per side, and did not allow running with the ball. Rutgers won 6-4. The game is recognized as the starting point for the college football tradition that eventually produced the sport played today.
Who invented the rules of American football?
Walter Camp, a Yale player and coach, is most responsible for shaping the rules that define American football. Starting in 1880, Camp introduced the line of scrimmage, the center snap, the down system, and standardized scoring. His reforms transformed a loose rugby variant into a structured game with possession, strategy, and defined field positions. The core architecture of modern football traces directly to his work.
Why was the forward pass added to football?
The forward pass was legalized in 1906 in response to a safety crisis. In 1905, 19 players died from football-related injuries, and President Theodore Roosevelt threatened federal intervention if the game did not change. The forward pass was one of several reforms introduced to open up the field, reduce mass formations, and limit the crushing collisions that were killing players. It also transformed football into a more strategic and watchable game.
Who invented the football patent?
Wilton Reach of Springfield, Massachusetts was granted a U.S. patent for a football design in 1939. His patent focused on the lacing structure and construction process that made the ball easier to grip and control. Reach was a prolific inventor who also held patents for golf equipment. The football patent captures the specific engineering behind the part of the ball every quarterback finds by touch on every snap.
What is the football patent print?
The football patent print is a reproduction of the original U.S. Patent Office drawing filed by Wilton Reach in 1939, rendered in a watercolor style on museum-quality paper. It shows the precise engineering diagram of the football's construction -- the panels, lacing, and geometry that defined the design. Available framed or unframed, it is the kind of piece that works for any football fan who appreciates the history and craftsmanship behind the game.
Written by Rider Tuff, founder of Timeless Patents. Timeless Patents makes museum-quality patent art prints from original U.S. Patent Office documents, celebrating the inventors behind your favorite sports, hobbies, and passions. Every print is available framed or unframed, starting at $49.99. Shop the full sports collection →
