The History Of Marbles Games

Ancient Marbles

The Most Simple Toy

Archaeologists speculate that the small clay balls found in the pyramid tombs of Egyptian kinds were produced for marble games. It is thought that the Aztecs played a form of marbles. Clay marbles have been found in prehistoric pueblo ruins in the southwestern United States, in the classic periods Valley of Mexico ruins, and in the northern plains.

The British Museum in London displays marbles of clay, stone and flint that date back to ancient Roman and Egyption civilizations.

In Ancient Greece and Rome, children played games with round nuts, and Jewish children played games with filberts at Passorver. The Latin expression "relinguere nuces" - putting away childish things - probably refers to the polished nuts in these games. Although most early marble games were played with stone and nuts, some early Roman glass spheres have been found in Europe. Whether they were intended for jewelery or served as childrens' toys is not known.

A second century roman, Athenaeus writes of a game of marbles in which the suitors of Penelope in the Odysseey shot their alleys against another marble representing the queen. The first player to hit the queen marble had another turn, and if he was successful again he was considered to be the probable bridegroom.

Glass marbles are thought to have been some of the many glass objects made in ninth century Venice, but it is not until the late middle ages that the playing of marbles games is again documented. It appears that by then marbles were known throughout Europe. A manustript from the fifteenth centruy refers to 'little balls with which schoolboys played". In 1503 the town council of Nurenberg, Germany, limited the playing of marble games to a meadow outside of town.

The popularity of marbles in England during the Middle Ages is evidenced in the town council statues of the village of Saint Gall, which othorized the user of a cat-o-nin-tails on boys who played marbles under the fish stand and refused to be warned off". A painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, "Children's Games" dated 1560 shows a scene of children playing marbles.

Archeologists have discovered marbles in the ruins of homes from this period, including the home of protestant Martin Luther.

In 1720 Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe wrote of a marble player "so dexterous an artist at shooting the tittle alabaster globe.. that he seldom missed."

Transition Marbles

Toward the end of the nineteenth century American entrepreneurs began to vie for a share of the German-dominated marble industry. Early attempts to compete with Germain production of handmade marbles provided commercially unsuccessful.

James Leighton, who founded and worked for a variety of turn of the century marbles companies, developed a new tool, a mold on a pair of tongs. This tool made it possible to create glass marbles that had only one pontil, the rough mark left on the glass when it was removed from a long steel rod called the punty. These marbles, today known as transitions, were a first step on the path top producing machine made marbles. They were made between 1896 and 1901.

The first truly machine made marbles were manufactured by an inventive Danish immigrant, Martin Frederick Christensen around the turn of the century. By the 1920s, machine -made marbles had supplanted the imports from Germany. World War 1 closed down many German marble mills, and they were never reopened. Imported German handmade marbles were to become a thing of the past as twentieth century progressed, bringing with it automation and mass production.