Another interesting tennis item emerged this week with a 1927 photo article about an Australian invented tennis ball machine. Here we have the inventor, Mr P Jepson of Melbourne (left) along with Gerald Patterson (2nd right) with the visiting French Team of Brugnon and Boussus. It served out balls at a rate of 14 -28 balls a minute. So there you go a very early date for the development of ball machines. Also note that Renee Lacoste wrote about building a Tennis ball machine in his book “Lacoste on tennis” so maybe this was the inspiration. This also went to the USA for various exhibitions at tournaments. No idea of the commercial success but a great piece of ingenuity.
