Billiard table ivory balls from warping. The first use of electric heating was for an 18.2 balkline tournament held in December 1927 between Welker Cochran and Jacob Schaefer, Jr. The New York Times announced it with fanfare: "For the first time in the history of world's championship balkline billiards a heated table will be used..." A pool table, or pocket billiards table, has six – one at each corner of the table () and one at the midpoint of each of the longer sides ( or ). Pool tables come in different sizes, typically referred to as , , , or tables.
Billiard room clearance around the pool table is ideal. Interior designer Charlotte Moss believed that "a billiard room is synonymous with group dynamics. It's where you mix drinks and embark on a little friendly competition..." Billiards probably developed from one of the late-14th century or early-15th century lawn games in which players hit balls with sticks. The earliest mention of pool as an indoor table game is in a 1470 inventory list of the accounts of King Louis XI of France. Following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, billiard rooms were added to some famous 18th-century cafés in Paris and other