Although it was believed for many years to have been invented by a Brunswick Billiards employee named Bob Lemieux in 1972, Air Hockey was actually invented by a trio of Brunswick engineers, Phil Crossman, Bob Kenrick, and Brad Baldwin, who were attempting to create a game utilising a frictionless surface, circa 1969.

The project never got off the ground and was left in mothballs for several years, but Bob Lemeiux later resurrected the project and refined the design to a certain degree. Some accounts of the story claim that Lemieux played the game on the table using a round disk and square mallets. Doorbells were hooked up at each end with a photo sensor to signal a "goal".

It was then decided that the "game" may appeal to a larger market and Air Hockey was born. How much of this is truth and how much of this is the result of gaps in the story being filled in over time through multiple storytellers may never be truly known, given that Lemieux died in the early 1990s.

What is certain is that the original patent references Phil Crossman, who, along with the other engineers, pioneered the frictionless table surface and, almost by chance, created an instant classic of a game around it.

Air Hockey was an immediate financial success, and by the mid-1970s there arose substantial interest in tournament play. As early as 1973, players in Houston had formed the Houston AH Association, and soon thereafter, the Texas Air-Hocky Players Association, codyfying rules and promoting the sport through local tournaments at Houston pubs Carnabys, Damians,and the University of Houston.

To ensure uniform play standards of the highest competitive quality, the United States Air-Table Hockey Association (USAA) was formed in 1975 by J. Phillip "Phil" Arnold, largely as an official sanctioning body. In this way, non-player friendly rules imposed by Brunswick corporation were rendered void, and the sport of air-hockey was secured under the control of Players since that time.

Since its inception, the USAA has sanctioned at least one national-level or World championship each year, crowning 12 different champions over 30 years. The USAA remains at present the only recognized worldwide player organization for air hockey, and has maintained a close relationship with table manufacturers and event promoters over the years.

Today, competitive air hockey is played by a close-knit community of serious players around the world, with extensive player bases near Houston, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York, and Boston in the United States, Barcelona in Spain, Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Novgorod in Russia and Most and Brno in the Czech Republic.

From the late 1980s, Caracas, Venezuela served as a hotbed of activity; three-time World Champion Jose Mora, and other finalists originated from there. By 1999 most of the Venezuelan activity had disappeared.

On 25 August 2007, the three inventors - Crossman, Kendrick, and Baldwin - attended the Texas State Tournament at the Southfork Hotel in Plano, Texas. It is the first appearance of the three together since the game was invented in 1969-1971.