The first marbles were made from clay and were shaped by hand. Martin Christensen invented the first automatic marble worker in 1902, which improved production. The game of marbles grew in popularity during the 1920s and 1930s. Modern machines use a furnace and colored glass strips to create perfect spheres. Marble working is also used in fine art to create beautiful, colorful marbles.
The first marbles were pulled out of clay and therefore offered no technological insight for glass marble makers. In fact, it was a man with a background in metal ball bearings who was able to devise a machine for shaping marbles. Martin Christensen, in 1902, patented his invention of belts and swivel wheels as the first automatic marble worker. The heated glass globes were individually hand-melted from the ends of the cylindrical rods and placed into the machine, so only part of the process was automated. These marbles didn’t have the piers, the bumps left over from where the rod was pulled off the globe, so they rolled straighter into the marbles game.
The machine was an improvement over shaping the marbles entirely by hand over a heat source. James Leighton’s work provided an intermediate step in mechanization in 1891. He patented a tong-like tool with a spherical die at the end, based on an earlier method by a German toymaker. While not automated in any way, the process sped up production.
The growing demand during the 1920s and 1930s could be successfully met by mechanized marble companies. Both children and adults got involved in the marble craze, collecting imaginative “shooters” and participating in tournaments. The game of marbles is based on throwing marbles at other players’ marbles, within a boundary, to knock them out of play.
In modern machines, a lot of glass melts at once in a furnace at about 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (815 degrees Celsius). Once the glass runs free, it slides down a chute dubbed the Gobfeeder, into the fluted mechanism. At this point you can add strips of colored glass. The rim of each wheel has a semicircular groove, and when paired with another, the space between them is a sphere, just like Christenson’s. The hot, bright orange glass droplets are separated and rolled while malleable. When they’ve been rolled into perfect spheres and cooled enough to hold their shape, the machine pushes them into a bin to be packaged and sold.
Marble working is also alive in the fine art community. Glassblowers and artisans still form marbles with tongs, a torch, a mold and a kiln, the same way hand-made glass beads are made. These talented people make beautiful marbles with dragons or butterflies in the center in dazzling colors.
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