Editing Pétanque (section)

=== Invention of the game ===
[[File:Joueurs de boules sur les Champs-Elysées.jpg|thumb|Boules players on the Champs-Élysées around 1840]]
Boules games have [[Boules#Boules games in history|a very long history]], dating back through the Middle Ages to ancient Rome, and before that to ancient Greece.
[[File:Gavarni - Le joueur de boules 1858.jpg|thumb|Boules player, by [[Paul Gavarni|Paul Gavarny]], 1858]]
In France in the second half of the 19th century, a form of boules known as [[Jeu Provençal|''jeu provençal'']] (or ''boule lyonnaise'') was extremely popular. In this form of the game, players rolled their boules or ran three steps before throwing a boule. Pétanque originally developed as an offshoot or variant of ''jeu provençal'' in 1910, in what is now called the ''Jules Lenoir Boulodrome'' in the town of [[La Ciotat]] near Marseilles.

A former ''jeu provençal'' player named Jules Lenoir was afflicted by rheumatism so severe that he could no longer run before throwing a boule. In fact, he could barely stand. A good friend named Ernest Pitiot was a local café owner. In order to accommodate his friend Lenoir, Pitiot developed a variant form of the game in which the length of the pitch or field was reduced by roughly half, and a player, instead of running to throw a boule, stood, stationary, in a circle. They called the game ''pieds tanqués'', "feet planted" (on the ground), a name that eventually evolved into the game's current name, ''pétanque''.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Charles |last=Giol |title=La pétanque |journal=Historia |date=November 2011}}</ref>

The first pétanque tournament was organized by Ernest Pitiot, along with his brother Joseph Pitiot, in 1910 in La Ciotat. The game spread quickly and soon became the most popular form of boules in France.

[[File:Pétanque players in Cannes (France) 2003.jpg|thumb|right|Pétanque players in [[Cannes]]]]

Before the mid-1800s, European boules games were played with solid wooden balls, usually made from boxwood root, a very hard wood. The late 1800s saw the introduction of cheap mass-manufactured nails, and wooden boules gradually began to be covered with nails, producing ''boules cloutées'' ("nailed boules"). After World War I, [[Round shot|cannonball]] manufacturing technology was adapted to allow the manufacture of hollow, all-metal boules.

The first all-metal boule, ''la Boule Intégrale'', was introduced in the mid-1920s by Paul Courtieu. The ''Intégrale'' was cast in a single piece from a bronze-aluminum alloy. Shortly thereafter, Jean Blanc invented a process of manufacturing steel boules by stamping two steel blanks into hemispheres and then welding the two hemispheres together to create a boule. With this technological advance, hollow all-metal balls rapidly became the norm.