Steph Posted December 27, 2010 Report Share Posted December 27, 2010 Just a stray thought. I don't really expect anyone to know .... but if you do ..... How were they made? How were the parts formed for those very first machines? I can't even picture how custom sized rectangular pieces would be made so I'm really flummoxed by the thought of how spiral rollers might have been crafted back in the day .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duffy Posted December 27, 2010 Report Share Posted December 27, 2010 a lathe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'llhavethat1 Posted December 27, 2010 Report Share Posted December 27, 2010 Probably had a lot to do with the industrial revolution. Things made leaps and bounds back then, machining etc. Augers have been around a bit longer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wvrons Posted December 27, 2010 Report Share Posted December 27, 2010 Any metal machine shop could have made the parts once they had the prints. The Scagg machine shop in St.Marys WV made many of the Alley machines. George Murphy had a machine shop near Pennsboro. He made some of the machines and machine parts used in the area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BIBLEfreak Posted December 28, 2010 Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 In the beginning there were the Machine Masters who roamed the universe looking for the perfect world upon which to create the perfect machine. Earth, or as the Machine Master called it "Sphere" was perfect and had children call humans, which would appreciate the machines they would leave behind. They marvled over the abilities the hand made craftsmen showed, and the artistry of the human brain, and so they implanted the seed for the perfect marble making machine in the human consciousness. So was the dawn of Machine Made Marble. Rumor has is David McCoullough is still in contact with the Machine Masters! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david Chamberlain Posted December 28, 2010 Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 And Dave would be the first one to tell you that this is the case. He regularly attributes his success in creating beautiful marbles to a Higher Power. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chordus Posted December 28, 2010 Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 Unfortunately, as is the case in all divine visions, this one got a little bit muddled. The real vision was that of a dodecahedron, but due to the prophet's bad eyesight, he mistook it for a sphere. What I want to know is why the companies named themselves "Agate" (Christiansen Agate, Akro Agate, Champion Agate). Glass is not the same thing as agate. They're both made of quartz, but that's the extent of it. It'd be like a pencil company calling themselves "diamond" due to the graphite in the pencils. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leroy65 Posted December 28, 2010 Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 I don't have the answer to the question, but just suppose the people that started making machine made marbles were trying to duplicate agate marbles which were very popular way back when. Therefore, beings the machine made marbles resembled real agates (both are round) in order to attract the attention of marble buyers they just added the "agate" word to their id (label). Remember before you hang me, I said the word "suppose". ----Leroy---- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lstmmrbls Posted December 28, 2010 Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 Simple: Real Agates were the most highly prized and valuable marbles at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david Chamberlain Posted December 28, 2010 Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 They were basically riding on a winning name.....'Agate.' Ipso facto, numerous marble types were likened to real agates. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted December 28, 2010 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 I'll say a blend between riding the winning name, and going with accepted custom. Glass marble companies did try consciously to compare their marbles to real stone - in what we would now call a fraudulent manner. However, "agate" had become an acceptable name for glass marbles in the 1800's. I need to confirm the dates but I believe that by the early 1900's, real stone marbles were called "realers" to distinguish them from glass ones.* In other words, "agate" was a name for toy marbles, whether made of stone or glass or even ceramic. And so it would be natural for someone who sold toy marbles to consider that as a possible choice for their company name. *edit: and then even the name "realer" was co-opted by Peltier for glass marbles, but that's another story! lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duffy Posted December 28, 2010 Report Share Posted December 28, 2010 marbles were called lotsa different things ....the region had lots to do with it and i suppose names even varied from town to town....im positive that news in the early part of the century wasnt like how we communicate today...reading what was in an article say in chicago had little to do with what was read and talked about in say pittsburgh....packing was prob quickly tossed and company names soon forgot....the old men when i was growin up in the 50s-60s called marbles commies and aggies...clearies.....these guys were prob in their 60-70and 80s then...what they called em would vary lots with what they were called somewhere else...in a bigger city it would prob vary from neigborhood to neighborhood.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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