Ahh Chinese Checkers. The six-point star, 121 indentation, and 60 multi-colored peg (or marble) game certainly creates a fun pattern for your eyes to explore, but Chinese Checkers isn't actually derivative of checkers, nor did it actually originate in China. What we know today as Chinese Checkers is actually a spin-off of a game called Halma. Halma was developed by a thoracic surgeon at Harvard, George Howard Monks, between 1883 and 1884. Monks based his version of Halma off of a British game called Hoppity. Monks had help from Dr. Thomas Hill, a mathematician, in developing the game and it was he who named it "Halma", which is Greek for "Jump". Apparently Halma is the only "19th Century internationally-known classic game to have originated in the U.S."
"Stern-Halma" was the original name of the game we know today as Chinese Checkers. Stern-Halma, "stern" meaning "star" in English, was first patented in Germany by the Ravensburger game company in 1892. The excitement expaned to England in 1909 and made it to the US in the 1920s. The name Chinese Checkers came about through when Pessman Games used it in a marketing scheme in the 1928s.
Frankly, the game has almost nothing to do with the Chinese and was mostly introduced to Chinese-speaking regions by the Japanese. But, this particular board is probably more than Chinese than most other copies of the game in the US; Pete's dad (hi Paul!) got it for him in China when he ventured there a couple years ago. Pete and I have yet to play Chinese Checkers (and with the modest size and instability of the pegs we're unlikely to do so with two, always hungry dogs around), but not being a huge fan of Checkers, I'm not in any hurry to do so. Then again...if it's nothing like Checkers...I may have to give it a try.
** Thanks to this website for providing the history of Chinese Checkers!
