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Early history: the 1960s and 1970s - Introduction in NFL and MLB David Chaney -- who moved to Raleigh in 1960 and later served as dean of the North Carolina State University College of Textiles -- headed the team of RTP researchers who created the famous artificial turf. That accomplishment led Sports Illustrated magazine to declare that Chaney was the man "responsible for indoor major league baseball and millions of welcome mats." Artificial turf first came to prominence in 1965, when AstroTurf was installed in the newly-built Astrodome in Houston, Texas. The use of AstroTurf and similar surfaces such as 3M's "TartanTurf" and "Poly Turf" became widespread in the 1970s and was installed in both indoor and outdoor stadiums used for baseball and football in the United States and Canada. Maintaining a grass playing surface indoors, while technically possible, is prohibitively expensive, while teams who chose to play on artificial surfaces outdoors did so because of the reduced maintenance cost, especially in colder climates with urban multi-purpose "cookie cutter" stadiums such as Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium and Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. Almost as soon as it made its debut in the Houston Astrodome, "plastic grass" acquired a bad reputation. The Astrodome only installed it as a last resort - the stadium's revolutionary roof made it almost impossible to maintain a grass field. And even though other football and baseball stadiums followed the Astrodome's lead, artificial turf was never a hit with players or spectators. False dawn: the 1980s and 1990s - Expansion to use in European football Some football (soccer) clubs in Europe installed artificial surfaces in the 1980s, which were called plastic pitches (often derisively) in countries such as England. In England several professional club venues had adopted the pitches, QPR's Loftus Road, Luton Town's Kenilworth Road, Oldham Athletic's Boundary Park and Preston's Deepdale until the English FA banned them in 1988. Artificial turf gained a bad reputation on both sides of the Atlantic with fans and especially with players. AstroTurf in particular is a far harder surface than grass, and soon became known an unforgiving playing surface which was prone to cause more injuries (and, in particular, more serious injuries) than would comparatively be suffered on a grass surface. The AstroTurf surfaces were also aesthetically unappealling to many fans.
In the 1990s many North American soccer clubs also removed their artificial surfaces and re-installed grass, while others moved to new stadiums with state-of-the-art grass surfaces that were designed to withstand cold temperatures where the climate demanded it. The use of artificial turf was later banned by FIFA, UEFA and by many domestic football associations, though, in recent years, both governing bodies have expressed an interest in resurrecting the use of artificial surfaces as the related technologies continue to evolve (see below 21st century). 21st century
Field hockey The introduction of synthetic surfaces has significantly changed the sport of field hockey (see field hockey history). Since being introduced in the 1970s, competitions in western countries are now mostly played on artificial surfaces. This has increased the speed of the game considerably, and changed the shape of hockey sticks to allow for different techniques, such as reverse stick trapping and hitting. Due to the cost of installing synthetic pitches, India and Pakistan have lost their once dominant position in international competition. Field hockey artificial turf differs from soccer and football artificial turf in the way that it does not try to reproduce a grass 'feel', being made of shorter fibres similar to the ones used on Dunfermline's pitch. This shorter fibre structure allows the improvement in speed brought by earlier artificial turfs to be retained. This development in the game is however problematic for many local communities who often cannot afford to build two artificial pitches: one for field hockey and one for other sports. The FIH and manufacturers are driving research in order to produce new pitches that will be suitable for a variety of sports. The different categories of pitches include: Residential and commercial applications Since the late 1990s, the use of synthetic grass has moved rapidly beyond athletic fields to residential and commercial landscaping artificial lawns. This trend has been driven primarily by two functions: the quality and variety of synthetic grasses that are available has improved dramatically, and cities and water conservation organizations have begun realizing the value of artificial grass as a conservation measure. Advantages Disadvantages | |||||||||||
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