Dominoes
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Dominoes. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a game played with twenty-eight flat, oblong pieces of wood, ivory, or bone. The face of each piece is divided by a line across the middle into two square compartments. Each compartment is either a blank or contains from one to six pits or dots like those of dice. The lowest domino is a double blank; the highest a double six. Each number of dots from blank to six occurs on seven different dominoes, and twice on one of them. The number five, for instance, occurs opposite a six, a five, a four, a three, a two, a one, and a blank. The game is played in various ways. Usually the dominoes are shuffled about, spots downward. Each player draws a number agreed upon. The highest double is then played. The players follow in turn, each matching the end of a piece that does not join any other. If a four and a two are exposed, for instance, the player may match either. If he plays a two and a six, his successor must then play a four or a six. If a player is unable to match either end he must draw from the table until he succeeds in doing so. The player whose pieces are all placed first wins by the number of spots still held by his opponent or opponents. If neither player can match, and the extra dominoes have all been drawn, the game is blocked. The player having the fewest number of spots wins. The game is not without arithmetical value for young children. Even older persons find recreation in playing it. See Games
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a game played with small flat rectangular pieces of ivory, about twice as long as they are broad. They are marked with spots varying in number. When one player leads by laying down a domino, the next must follow by placing alongside of it another which has the same number of spots on one of its sides. Thus, if the first player lays down 6-4, the second may reply with 4-8, or 6-7, etc.; in the former case he must turn in the 4, placing it beside the 4 of the first domino, so that the numbers remaining out will be 6-8; in the latter case he must turn in the 6 to the 6 in like manner, leaving 4-7, to which his opponent must now respond. The player who cannot follow suit loses his turn, and the object of the game is to get rid of all the dominoes in hand, or to hold fewer spots than your opponent when the game is exhausted by neither being able to play. The game was invented in the 18th century.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The rules Aiton's set out in 1910 are still the rules: a double-six set of 28 tiles, matching ends, blocked games decided on spot count. Two things have moved. Collier's claim in 1921 that "the game was invented in the 18th century" now applies only to Europe, where dominoes surfaced in Italy around then; tile games of this kind are documented in China centuries earlier, and the Chinese ancestry is the standard account today. And the game outgrew the drawing room: extended double-nine and double-twelve sets support modern favourites like Mexican Train, dominoes are a fiercely competitive sport in the Caribbean and Latin America, and toppling displays have knocked over more than four million tiles in a single run.
Written for this edition, 2026.