Billiards evolved from lawn game similar to croquet played sometime during the 15th century in Northern Europe and probably in France. It was played indoors to a wooden table with green cloth to simulate grass, and a simple border was placed around the edges. The balls were shoved, rather than struck, with wooden sticks called "maces." The term "billiard" came from French, either from the word "billiard," one of the wooden sticks, or "bille," a ball.

This game was first played with two balls on a table with six pockets with a hoop similar to a croquet wicket and an upright stick was used as a target. During the eighteenth century, the hoop and target gradually disappeared, leaving only the balls and pockets. Most of the information came from accounts of playing by royalty and other nobles. It was known as the "Noble Game of Billiards" since the early 1800's, but still there is evidence that people from all walks of life have played the game since its inception. In 1600, the game was familiar enough to the public that Shakespeare mentioned it in Anthony and Cleopatra.

After Seventy-five years, the first book of billiard rules remarked England as "few towns of note therein which hath not a public Billiard-Table."

In the late 1600's, the cue stick was developed. When the ball lay near a rail, the mace was inconvenient to use because of its large head. In that situation, the players would turn the mace around and use its handle to strike the ball. The handle was called a "queue" - meaning "tail" - from which we get the word "cue". For a long time only men were allowed to use the cue while women were forced to use the mace because it was felt that they were more likely to rip the cloth with the sharper cue.

Before tables were originally flat vertical walls for rails and their only function was to keep the balls from falling off. Then players discovered that balls could bounce off the rails and began deliberately aiming at them. Thus a "bank shot" is one in which a ball is made to rebound from a cushion as part of the shot.

After the 1800’s, billiard equipment improved rapidly all over England, because of the Industrial Revolution. The leather cue tip was well developed by 1823. Chalk was used to increase friction between the ball and the cue stick even before cues had tips. Visitors from England showed Americans how to use spin which explains why it is called "English" in the United States but nowhere else, while the British themselves refer to it as "side". The two-piece cue arrived in 1829. Slate became popular as a material for table beds around 1835. By 1845 the vulcanization was used to make billiard cushions. By 1850 the billiard table had essentially evolved into its current form.

From about 1770’s until the 1920's, the dominant billiard game in Britain was English Billiards, played with three balls and six pockets on a large rectangular table. Before that time, there were no fixed table dimensions. The British billiard tradition game is carried on today primarily through the game of Snooker, a complex and colorful game combining offensive and defensive aspects and played on the same equipment as English Billiards but with 22 balls instead of three.