Steph

Various Names and Moves, to be added from American Machine Made Marbles Note: Now I've procrastinated for three years. Maybe I'll update this soon. I hope!

Me too. Another of Pete's pix (of Ken's mibs), (coz it's got such nice detail)

I like. :-) Looks like your ribbons might be blue like mine, and maybe faded a bit the same way mine did in the photos. Mine photographed as close to clear but they're blue and a little darker than the rest of the mib. Just a little detail, but still interesting to me

way cool!

Awwwwww, isn't that sweet.

Cool. Wider response than I guessed. Doing the marble history stuff, I consult my books a lot. Here's what I've used in the last week or two for history or IDs. AMMM, and Grist's Big Book of Marbles, the 3rd edition because it has WV swirls Baumann's Collecting Antique Marbles the Hardy's Akro book Jabo: a Classic Bob Block's ID and price guide, because I was looking up what he said about Rootbeer Floats (which was incorrect), and then Type III NLR's Gartley and Carskadden's Colonial Period and 19th-Century Children's Toy Marbles, for the machine ground stone mibs from the 1800's and early 1900's The Vitro book and the MFC book. And my WVMCC newsletters.

Here's a different take on the "which books do you recommend" question? Which books have you actually used recently? Mentally using it is okay too ... like if you were conscious that you were using info from a book but didn't actually have to go to the shelf to verify it.

Last one in my waiting list: mentioned in 1942 - a few marbles at the bottom of a soap dish, to hold up the soap and stop it from getting caked or glurmy. um, the "glurmy" part is mine.

Well, I'm not finding the references, so here's the gist: using mibs in training for jobs. The first reference I saw was would-be gem cutters practicing on glass marbles before moving to precious stones. What I wanted to look up was WHO the potential gem cutters were. I think this might have been part of a British program for injured veterans, maybe after WWII. Another job-training use was reported in 1958. Beginning iron handlers would practice with marbles before working with metal. Apparently molten glass was a good simulation of molten metal.

If you dry clothes on a line ... hey, it's environmentally friendly, right? ... well, if you dry your socks or stockings on a line, marbles in the toes can help them from getting wrapped around the clothes line during wind gusts. ;-) so they say ... um, that's not the one I'm hunting for the details on ... just ran across it while hunting .... lol

Here's the very cool industrial uses thread: Whaddaya Know About ... Industrial Uses For Marbles? It's not only "industrial". It includes some sorta of play and decoration-related ones, but of course different from the ordinary knuckle down marble game sort of play. And below is where I'm starting an index coz it's just so darned long already, and I know there is more to come. It'll take me a bit to catch up, and to figure out how I want to organize the index. :-) Starting with material from the first several entries, alphabetizing in a way ammuntion, e.g. Civil War anti-compaction in shipping of some powders back-flow preventers carpet rollers (what is that? I don't know yet. :-) moving heavy materials, e.g. rolling caskets into mausoleums In drink dispensers. (codd bottles) shipping and manuf. for fiberglass foot massages........ furniture casters graining balls for stone lithography note, towel, & broom holders Torpedo bombs for oil wells Reflectors, both signs and vehicle. agitators for Spray Paint Cans water filter balls (IE Atlanta Olympics/Tennessee dredge). To be continued ...

Hey! I finally figured out how to use the Wayback Machine at Archive.org! Check it out! Pete's pastel page edit: That was further back than I knew. Here's the version I remember, the one which mentions the different types - single seam, double seam or handgather: later version

I have a 1990 "travel tip" sort of news article for an item called The Sea Band. Wrist bands with a marble in each one. Pressure applied to the "Nei Kuan point" was supposed to take care of motion sickness. Ah, I see it is still around. And still has a marble, or something marble-like. oh boy, probably need to index these someday. It's getting tuff to keep track of what's already been posted. And I know there are still more to come. I have at least one more to track down in my files to check the particulars before I post it .

Oh yeah, those are some good bubbles. Pic #2 shows the holes off great! like blue swiss cheese!

Hi Craig. Here's mine which I posted once for ID. It's opaque with transparent rivulets. It has a single seam. It went from being not a CAC to being a good candidate. I've matched the blue with known CACs in hand so I feel pretty good about it. More views: (click on link for larger version) http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/CAC/PaleBlueSingleSeam_B.jpg I think the LOM page which featured Ken's box is gone. The old link doesn't work. What I THINK I remember reading about his is that the box contained three types: some handgathered, some single seam, some two seam.

(click to enlarge) thanks -s

Hard to present this without speculating but I'll try to keep the speculating at a minimum. Here are some stray things I've learned about shipping of old. As you know, it was the lifeline of many nations. There appears to have been much law dedicated to definitions and profitability of all aspects of it, including ballast. Hard for me to sort through the old discussions because they get very technical very fast. Ins and outs of freights and duties and the best ways to get things from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast and vice versa, not to mention international commerce issues. Naturally the legislators, manufacturers, unions, lobbyists and reporters knew the background so they didn't have to repeat the basics for my benefit. lol But some of what I think I have learned: Trade deficits had a different meaning in the olden days than they have now. There were times when the U.S. was exporting more in volume than it imported. A ship based in the U.S. might sail full to Europe or to some remote island but it might not have anything scheduled for pickup to bring back to the U.S. If a U.S. manufacturer had to pay for shipping both ways to get their product one way, then that was not cool. Also after the manufacturer's goods were offloaded, the ship could be virtually empty and it couldn't sail that way. There would have to be something weighty loaded for the return voyage. If it could be something which the ship owner might turn into a little profit at the end of the voyage, that would be in both his interest and the interest of the manufacturer who paid for the first leg of the journey, and the interest of all the consumers having to absorb the cost of the manufacturer's goods. Basically, it was in the interest of most people to have full, profitable ships. But when one law was made to "fix" things, someone found a way to make it profitable and someone else wanted part of the pie, (edit: or someone found it oppressive), and more laws were made. and on and on. Right now I'm seeing lots of references to non-commercial ballast. Almost as if once upon a time, ballast might have been able to be "recycled" at the end of a trip, with some sort of profit to the shipper. But I don't have confirmation of that. What I do have is a few references to such things as pig iron and salt as useful ballast items with some potential commercial value. The sort of stuff warehouses might have on hand, and might export if there was room, yet wouldn't worry about if there wasn't room. No urgency. The marble chips of the type which were turned into play marbles were also useful as ballast. Sometimes that was mentioned as a non-commercial type of ballast, the type which could simply be dumped from the ship in order to make room for new cargo. Another neat factoid is that as more and more cable was laid enabling communication between different ports, the issue of empty ships became less of a problem. People at intermediate stops could be notified that there was empty space they could use if wanted. etc. So the main marble-related speculation is: did toy marbles fall into that category? The category of dually functional ballast (or other word but similar concept), valuable both for its weight and for its continuing usability at the other end of the trip. I am posting this here and now because I have another article to post soon, one which mentions ballast but isn't mostly about ballast. I'll be posting in a different thread hoping the ballast issue doesn't make it sink. (sorry that was a bad one.lol) I do care about the ballast issue, so here is where I'm discussing it. And I welcome anything else anyone knows or finds out about this sort of cheap freight concept as it might or might not have existed before 1950 or so. I don't know if/when I will be able to find out more about it. Thanks.

Dang, he's almost as cute as my cats. Bet he's almost as fun too. lol Now I want one! A marble roller I mean. Grandson is probably not an option considering I don't have kids. Hey, there's a "more options" button at the bottom of this reply window. What would that do? Nope, still no grandsons. I guess I'll settle for a marble roller.

:-) LOL. No problem. Just a glitch. I wrote the seller to tell them of our interest in the history of German machine mades and to ask for the name of the company or any information they could share. That was 3 days ago now. I haven't heard back. I wouldn't blame someone for not wanting to give out information like that. There could be many reasons to not answer, not the least of which is that I'm a stranger and they would want to protect their source for the marbles.

The 1970's June 1, 1974: the company closes. Feb. 25, 1975: Clinton Israel passes away after a brief illness.

The 1960's

The 1950's Ebay Slow for Some Things... - some of Don's boxes with Lion's club campaign ads.

The 1940's cont.

1941 -- The company reorganizes Master Glass is incorporated under the sole ownership of Clinton F. Israel

1930's cont.