The earliest known forms of bowling date back to ancient Egypt. Remenants of bowling balls have been found among artificats (dating to 3200 BC). Balls were made using the husks of grain, covered in a material such as leather or bound with string. About 2000 years ago, a similar game evolved among the Romans and this eventually came to be known as Bocce or outdoor bowling. Around AD 400, bowling began in Germany as a religious ritual to cleanse onself from sin by rolling a rock into a club (kegal), representing the heathen, resulting in bowlers being called keglers.
King Henry VIII was an avid bowler. In 1511, he banned bowling for the lower classes and imposed a levy for private lanes to limit them to the wealthy. Martin Luther, who had a bowling lane built next to his home for his children, set the number of pins at nine. An 1810 painting of Ipswich, England shows a man bowling with a triangular formation of ten pins.
Newspaper articles as early as 1820 refer to ten-in alleys. In 1846, the oldest surviving bowling lanes in the United States, were built as a part of Roseland College. The revolution of 1848, resulted in accelerated German immigration to the U.S., reaching 5 million by 1900, bringing their love of beer and bowling with them. In 1875, the National Bowling Association (NBA) was founded by 27 local clubs in New York City to standardize rules for ten-pin bowling, setting the ball size and distance between the foul line and the pins, but failing to agree to other rules.
In 1895, the modern standardized rules for ten-pin bowling were established in New York City by the American Bowling Congress (ABC) who changed the scoring system from a maximum of 200 points for 20 balls to a maximum of 300 points for 12 balls and set the maximum ball weight at 16 lbs. and in distance at 12 inches.
In 1908, the now oldest surviving bowling alley for tenpin sport was opened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the basement of the Holler House tavern, containing the oldest sanctioned lanes in the United States. Prohibition caused bowling alleys to disassociate from saloons, turning bowling into a family game and encouraging women bowlers.
Greatest bowlers of all times include Pete Weber, Walter Ray Williams, Jr., Earl Anthony, Norm Duke and Mark Roth. Marion Ladewig is widely considered the greatest female bowler of all times.