Marbles - Classic Toy Series Traditional Cache

This cache is part of a series on classic toys that originated no later than the 1970's. Most will have originated earlier, much earlier. I wanted to bring a little history behind these toys in the cache page and a little fun in the cache.

Believe it or not, but no one really knows where marbles originated. They've been found in the ashes of Pompeii and in the tombs of ancient Egyptians, and they were played with by Native American tribes, so it's impossible to pin down a precise country of origin. The earliest examples were simply stones that had been polished smooth by a running river, but for centuries artisans made them by hand from clay, stone, or glass.

Mass production became possible in 1884, when Sam Dyke of Akron, Ohio, created a wooden block with six grooves, each of which held a lump of clay. An operator would roll a wooden paddle over all the clay balls at once, with a back-and-forth and slightly lateral motion, creating six marbles. With around 350 employees, Dyke's factory was cranking out five train carloads, or about one million marbles, every day. Mass production made marbles much cheaper to make, allowing the price to drop from about one penny each to a bag of 30 marbles for the same price. Other businessmen jumped on the bandwagon and Akron soon became the marble capital of late-19th century America.

In 1915, mass production of glass marbles began, thanks to a machine invented by Akron's M.F. Christensen. His machine consisted of a screw conveyor made up of two grooved cylinders spun next to each other. A "slug" of molten glass was placed between the cylinders on one end and it was gradually carried down to the opposite side, simultaneously cooled and shaped into a sphere by the rolling grooves. The design worked so well, it has remained essentially unchanged and is still the most common way to make marbles today.

Marbles were really popular throughout the early part of the 20th century, but World War II rationing, plus the utter chaos of the European Theatre, put a damper on the sport. It enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 1970s, and continues to be played today, but it has never been able to reclaim its title as a childhood institution.

The cache location has been approved by Brian Russart of the Milwaukee County Department of Parks. Permit # 521

This cache placed by a member of: (click to visit our website)