Colchester Rubber Co. The brand known for being the world’s first Sneaker brand and inventing the “World’s First Basketball Sneakers”, circa 1892. The town of Colchester was a mere 50 miles from Springfield, Massachusetts where basketball was invented in December 1891 by Dr. James Naismith. Given his interest in sport, it is believed that Irving Watkinson was a basketball player early in the life of the sport. Whatever his link with the sport and Dr. Naismith, it is considered that Irving Watkinson designed a shoe specifically for use playing basketball. A surviving pair of basketball shoes was discovered in December 2004 at an
James Dyer Ball James Dyer Ball James Dyer Ball (波乃耶) (4 December 1847 in Canton, China – 22 February 1919 in London, England) was a Hong Kong scholar and author born in Canton. He is noted for works on Chinese culture and for contributing to the development of the system of Cantonese Romanisation. Ball was the son of the Reverend Dyer Ball of Massachusetts, United States, and his much younger second wife, Scottish missionary Isabella Robertson. Apart from preaching, his father ran a dispensary and opened a school in Canton, Guangzhou. At age 7, Ball's family began three years of travel in Britain