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A short history of marbles

Children have been rolling small balls at targets for thousands of years. The game changed with the materials: clay, then stone, then glass, and now glass drawn on a screen.

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Clay and stone

Small balls of clay, stone and nuts turn up among the belongings of children in the ancient world, including Egypt and Rome. The name "marble" comes from the stone some were later cut from. For most of history, though, the ordinary child’s marble was baked clay.

Glass from Germany

In the nineteenth century glassmakers in Germany began making glass marbles by hand, snipping them from rods of patterned glass. Their swirls and onionskins are the antique marbles collectors look for today.

Machines in Ohio

In the early 1900s Martin Christensen of Akron, Ohio, patented a machine for making glass marbles. Machine-made marbles were rounder and far cheaper, and American factories were soon producing them in huge numbers. The cat’s eye, developed in Japan and popular from the 1950s, became the best-known marble in the world.

Tournaments

• The National Marbles Tournament has been held in the United States since 1922, for many years in Wildwood, New Jersey. Children aged 7 to 14 play Ringer.
• In England, the British and World Marbles Championship is played on Good Friday at Tinsley Green in West Sussex.

From playground to screen

The appeal has not changed: a small heavy ball, a flick, and a target that is harder to hit than it looks. Marble Rumble keeps that and adds the things a screen is good at, such as a plate that spins, holes that open and close, and four people playing at once. If you would like to try the original, here is how to play marbles.