Started as an outgrowth of coursing in England, and emerged in its recognizable modern form, featuring circular or oval tracks, with the invention of the mechanical, or artificial, hare in 1912 by an American, Owen Patrick Smith. O.P. Smith had altruistic aims for the industry to stop the killing of the jack rabbits. In the 1920s it was popular with the middle class in the US and the US, but quickly became a working class phenomenon in the 1930s.