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
YMCA YMCA in Springfield, Mass. in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a clergyman, educator and physician. Naismith was asked to create an indoor "athletic distraction" to keep rowdy youth busy in the cold New England winter months. Luther Gulick, the head of the Springfield Y, gave Naismith two weeks to come up with a game to occupy a particularly incorrigible group. Naismith decided the game had to be physically active, simple to understand and would have minimal physical roughness. The original game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets nailed to the balcony of the Springfield Y. The