I'm in for some history lesson.

General Yo-Yo
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  1. Who or when was the first time the term 1A, 2A, etc used?
  2. When was the world yoyo contest first held and where, who initiated it?
  3. Tell me any interesting piece history on top of your head that most people probably didn’t know yet or you haven’t had the moment to tell.
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  1. 1A was first used at worlds in 1998 I believe, I think US Nationals had a 1A division in 1997 as well. 3a-5a divisions were introduced at worlds in 2003.

  2. First worlds… 1930s? Might’ve been earlier

  3. Kohta Watanabe created fingerspins in the late 90s, but the term “fingerspin” wasn’t widely used until 2012 when C3 made the Dark Sonic. Before then they were mainly called horizontal finger grinds.

I really wish there was a book or an article or something on the history of yoyo up to 2010. It’d definitely be something I’d pick up. I know we have yoyowiki and some other sources but most of the time there’s not much detail and a lot of stuff can’t be found through online research and is just kind of lost in history.

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I want to say it was Alan Nagao who had the idea to have the 1A and 2A divisions, which were officially expanded at 03 (US Nats & Worlds) to include 3A/4A/5A.

The first World YoYo Contest was 1932, won by Harvey Lowe, but it wasn’t a regular ongoing event until 1992.

If you’re interested in pre-2000’s yo-yo history, look up the Yo-Yo Times newsletter by Stu Crump and the Noble Disk newsletter by Bill Alton. Both of those curated and disseminated a metric TON of information (tricks, news, and community goings-on) in the age before the internet.

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I LOVED the YoYo Times! Wish I still had mine & hope Steve eventually gets them scanned and available to get them again.

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Yeah I’ve got em all in print (and the Noble Disk). I’ll try to scan them. Kinda figured they were already online somewhere?
It’s a great resource.

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The Noble Disc is good stuff.
It’s on the interwebz somewhere on PDF, but I’m not sure about the yoyo times.

I’d love to read it though.

Seems like you could probably get them bound and printed and some crazy people like me might even buy it :smiley:

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If you have time please do! I really appreciate it.

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That’d be awesome. Never read Noble Disk, that was more of a “Eastern” newsletter wasn’t it?

Last I talked to Steve about it he was planning to have all the YoYo Times scanned and made into an ebook, then sell them with all the profits going to Stu’s family.

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I wish I had the time to write all about it.

Maybe next year. LOL

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Please do.

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Next year is imminent though.