WHEN U LOSE YOUR MARBLES PLUS

Oddly enough, the origin of the phrase, 'losing your marbles' can't definitively be traced back to the game of marbles. If you're about to take an easy shot with your taw, you can say the marble you're aiming for is a 'dead duck.' Playing 'for keeps' means that any competitor's marbles you knock out are added to your personal collection. 'Fudging' means you crossed the line on your shot, which is a minor form of cheating. For example, to 'knuckle down' means to put your hand in a position to shoot your marble, keeping at least one knuckle on the ground at all times. In-game slang includes many phrases that have made it into the everyday lexicon. And if you can spot any of these marbles on sight, you're probably a 'mibster,' a term for someone who plays marbles. Sometimes the figurine is an animal, a character (like Santa Claus), or even a real person (like Teddy Roosevelt, at left). 'Sulphides' are semi-opaque glass marbles that usually contain a small figured in the middle. 'Onionskins' are glass marbles with swirls of layered colors that extend over the length of the marble. 'Jaspers' are common, blue marbles made from glazed or unglazed china. An 'alley' can be a marble made of alabaster, but it can also be another term for a 'shooter' or 'taw,' the large marble used to knock around the smaller ones, which are sometimes called 'mibs' or 'ducks.' 'Bumblebees' are yellow and black striped. For example, 'aggies' are marbles that are made from agate, a type of stone. Marbles usually earn their nickname based upon what they look like, what they're used for, or the material used to make them. But if you're an experienced player, you probably have a half-dozen slang terms to describe the sphere in front of you. To the layman, a marble is just a marble. 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.

WHEN U LOSE YOUR MARBLES PLUS

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. Watch marble production on 'How It's Made':

The design worked so well, it has remained essentially unchanged and is still the most common way to make marbles today. 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. His machine consisted of a screw conveyor made up of two grooved cylinders spun next to each other.

In 1915, mass production of glass marbles began, thanks to a machine invented by Akron's M.F. Other businessmen jumped on the bandwagon and Akron soon became the marble capital of late-19th century America. 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. With around 350 employees, Dyke's factory was cranking out five train carloads, or about one million marbles, every day.

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. 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. 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. 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. Rolling Through HistoryД«elieve it or not, but no one really knows where marbles originated. If you're among the many people who have no idea what any of that means, stick around as we explore the history of marbles. If you're the type of mibster that has knuckled down with a taw and shot for an aggie duck, then you already know quite a bit about mibs.

When u lose your marbles