Marbles
A marble is a small spherical toy often made from glass, clay, steel, plastic or agate. These balls vary in size. Most commonly, they are about 1 cm (1⁄2 in) in diameter, but they may range from less than 1 mm (1⁄30 in) to over 8 cm (3 in), while some art glass marbles for display purposes are over 30 cm (12 in) wide. Marbles can be used for a variety of games called marbles. They are often collected, both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colors. In the North of England the objects and the game are called "taws", with larger taws being called bottle washers after the use of a marble in Codd-neck bottles.
In the early twentieth century, small balls of stone, identified by archaeologists as marbles, were found on excavation near Mohenjo-daro. Marbles are often mentioned in Roman literature, as in Ovid's poem Nux (which mentions playing the game with walnuts), and there are many examples of marbles from excavations of sites associated with Chaldeans of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. They were commonly made of clay, stone or glass. Marbles arrived in Britain, imported from the Low Countries, during the medieval era.
Marbles were first manufactured in Germany in the 1800s. The game has become popular throughout the U.S. and other countries.Ceramic marbles entered inexpensive mass production in the 1870s.
A German glassblower invented marble scissors, a device for making marbles, in 1846. The first mass-produced toy marbles (clay) made in the U.S. were made in Akron, Ohio, by S. C. Dyke, in the early 1890s. Some of the first U.S.-produced glass marbles were also made in Akron, by James Harvey Leighton. In 1903, Martin Frederick Christensen—also of Akron, Ohio—made the first machine-made glass marbles on his patented machine. His company, The M. F. Christensen & Son Co., manufactured millions of toy and industrial glass marbles until they ceased operations in 1917. The next U.S. company to enter the glass marble market was Akro Agate. This company was started by Akronites in 1911, but was located in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Today, there are only two American-based toy marble manufacturers: Jabo Vitro in Reno, Ohio, and Marble King, in Paden City, West Virginia.
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