Classic Cookes - dimpled golf ball (U.S. patent 878254 – 1908)

Victorian entrepreneur William Taylor founded the lens making company that would become known as Cooke in Leicester in 1886 with his brother. William Taylor was the genius of the company and believed that it wasn’t worth starting to make a product before you could measure it. As such precision was paramount.

Taylor’s thought process wasn’t just limited to industry leading cinema lenses, it even encompassed golf ball design in a way that would change the sport forever! The story goes that Taylor was advised by his doctor to find a relaxing hobby and he found his way to golf but wasn’t content with just playing the sport so attacked the game with the same energy and inventiveness with which he approached business and scientific pursuits.

It had previously been discovered in the late 1800s that marks left on golf balls from the clubhead along with other scuffs and damage actually made the ball more aerodynamic. It is interesting to look back on some of the freak patterns with which people were experimenting in the early stages of machine-made marking. Spirals of one form or another were a common feature and were believed to have the same value as the rifling of a gun.

So it was becoming more standard practice to produce balls with all sorts of irregular and fancy patterns on them but William Taylor felt this approach was haphazard. As such his work begun to determine what design would achieve the maximum flight. He built a glass fronted test chamber in which smoke was blown over differently patterned ball surfaces. He then carefully studied the eddies and vortices which resulted.

Eventually the regularly spaced indentation design won out and was patented by Taylor Hobson in 1908. They would continue to be the pioneers in the manufacturer of accurate moulds for producing the markings.