A marble is a small spherical toy usually made from glass, clay, or agate. These balls vary in size. Most commonly, they are about ½ inch (1.25 cm) across, but they may range from less than ¼ inch (0.635 cm) to over 3 inches (7.75 cm), while some art glass marbles for display purposes are over 12 inches (30 cm) wide. Marbles can be used for a variety of children's games, and are often collected, both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colors.

History

Marbles are often mentioned in Roman literature, and there are many examples of marbles from ancient Egypt. They were commonly made of clay, stone or glass.

Ceramic marbles entered inexpensive mass production in the 1870s.

A German glassblower invented marble scissors in 1846, a device for making marbles. They entered mass production in Ohio the early 20th century when World War I cut off their importation from Europe. This tasked the American marble industry to produce a mechanized method of glass marble production that soon became the most common system in the world. Glass marbles became the most popular variety and have remained so to this day.

In some developing countries, children use steel, minerals or tiny rocks as less pricey marble substitutes.

Gameplay

One version of the game involves drawing a circle in sand, and players will take turns knocking other players' marbles out of the circle with their own marble. This game is called ringer. Other versions involve shooting marbles at target marbles or into holes in the ground (such as rolly or rolley hole). A larger-scale game of marbles might involve taking turns trying to hit an opponent's marble to win. A useful strategy is to throw a marble so that it lands in a protected, or difficult location if it should miss the target. As with many children's games, new rules are devised all the time, and each group is likely to have its own version, often customized to the environment.

United Kingdom

Popular in the early nineties was a marble game called grids. Similar to rolly or rolley hole the object was to be the first to land your marble into a hole. However a makeshift board was created using manhole grids. Each player would start at either end and attempt to thumb-flick their marble between the raised sections of the grid towards the removal hook holes. A player is not permitted to jump his marble over the raised sections but only travel down the grid lines. Each player takes turns until one reaches the hole. In a keepsy game the winner takes the other players marble.

Taiwan

Yet another specialized version of the game (as played in Taiwan) involves a five-holed course and can be played by two to six players. This version is typically played on a flat hard-packed clay surface. Five divots, approximately 2 cm deep and 4 to 5 cm wide, are excavated in the four corners of a 1.5m by 1.5m square. The fifth divot is excavated in the center of the square where the square's diagonals intersect. The players each begin with one marble and a series of games of "rock-paper-scissors" determines the starting order of the players. The beginning player starts at one of the holes in the corner of the square and this hole becomes the designated "home" hole for the remainder of the game. The first player shoots for the center hole. If he or she successfully shoots his or her marble into the center hole (namely the marble comes to rest in the hole without bouncing out), then he or she gets to shoot for the hole to the right. In the event of a miss, the next player in line gets to start and he or she also can proceed until a shot misses a hole. The idea is to shoot the marble from the home hole to center, from center to right, right back to center, center to left, left back to center, center to top, top back to center, and finally from center back to home. The first player to complete this course becomes the "ghost" and is at liberty to shoot at the other players' marbles as they attempt to complete the course. If the ghost successfully hits another player's marble, the ghost then wins that marble and the losing party removes the marble from play and surrenders the marble to the ghost immediately. Although the ghost wins the match immediately upon completing the course, the game is not over until all players have either completed the course or had their marbles removed from play by the ghost.