"According to Jean-Yves Guillain, the author of Badminton, an Illustrated History, the first traces of a game involving the use of a shuttlecock can be found in Asia, and specifically in China. It supposedly has its origins in T’su-chü, a Football game created 2,500 years BCE at the time of the legendary Huang-Di in order to improve the skills of soldiers fighting Chi-You, the leader of the Miao people. In Japan, the related game Hanetsuki was played as early as the 16th century. In the west, badminton came from a game called battledore and shuttlecock, in which two or more players keep a feathered shuttlecock in the air with small racquets. The modern form of Badminton however can be traced to India, where British military officers stationed there in the late 19th century became interested in a similar local game which was known to them as Poona (derived from Pune, an Indian garrison town). This game was taken back to England where the rules of badminton were set out. Another early version of the game was recorded in the 1850s in the southern Indian city of Tanjore, called pooppanthu vilayattam (Tamil for flower-ball game) in which balls made of wool and cardboard were used in the place of the modern-day shuttlecock. Isaac Spratt, a London toy dealer, published a booklet, Badminton Battledore - a new game in 1860, but unfortunately no copy has survived. The new sport was definitively launched in 1873 at the Badminton House, Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of Beaufort. During that time, the game was referred to as "The Game of Badminton," and the game's official name became Badminton. Until 1887, the sport was played in England under the rules that prevailed in India. The Bath Badminton Club standardized the rules and made the game applicable to English ideas. The basic regulations were drawn up in 1887. In 1893, the Badminton Association of England published the first set of rules according to these regulations, similar to today's rules, and officially launched badminton in a house called "Dunbar" at 6 Waverley Grove, Portsmouth, England on September 13 of that year. They also started the All England Open Badminton Championships, the first badminton competition in the world, in 1899." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton