The very first marbles were made of baked clay or stone (sometimes marble stone).  In the past, children used peas, beans, nuts, cherry pits or even knucklebones instead!  Glass marbles first appeared in Venice around 900 AD, but making them was a slow, skilled job, so they remained rare and expensive.  Clay and pot marbles were the standard kind for the next nine centuries. 

In the 19^th century, German factories started producing marbles on a large scale.  They were made of both china and a hard stone called agate.  Agate marbles became so popular that stone marbles are still called aggies.  America imported large numbers of German marbles and then started manufacturing its own.   Machines began making glass marbles in the 1890s, first in Germany and then the United States.  Most of the marbles people buy today are machine-made, although some are still hand-crafted.

The very first mass-produced marbles were also the very first mass-produced toys of any type.  According to an article in the Akron Daily Beacon on July 25, 188, Samuel C. Dyke, at his Akron factory on South Main Street, made the first marbles ever made in America for market…”  Further evidence suggests that Dyke may have been mass-producing clay marbles as early as 1884 or at least 1885.  This newspaper article was also a way for Dyke to announce completion of his brand new state-of-the art toy factory, the S. C. Dyke & Company, 1888-1891. 

Akron was also home to the first incorporated toy marble factory in America, The American Marble & Toy Manufacturing Company, 1891-1904.  Brothers, A. L. and Samuel C. Dyke founded this company, which was located on West Center Street near the Ohio Canal.  This company was the largest toy manufacturer in the U.S. during the 1890s. 

The only type of marbles the factory didn’t make were stone marbles.  They were still imported from Germany and were the most highly prized by serious mibsters.  Then, in November of 1892, S. C. Dyke & Company were the first to attempt to manufacture stone marbles by the newly-organized Akron Stone Marble Company in Boston, Ohio -- today in the middle of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  (originally reported in the Summit County Beacon, November 29, 1892 – 3:3)  Dyke became the only toy marble company in America offering a complete line of toy marbles – clay, glass and stone.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Dyke’s new factory was its ability to produce up to a million marbles a day (Akron Daily Beacon, June 18, 1890 – 1:3, Akron, Ohio)!  Mass production caused the retail price of a toy marble to drop tremendously.  Once, a penny wouldn’t even buy a single common ordinary clay marble (called a commie) and now, for a penny or two, a child could buy a whole handful. The company was so successful that other local entrepreneurs opened up their own marbleworks.  By the 1920s, there were 32 marble factories in the greater Akron area.  (bluesanta.us) 

"Supplying America with marbles is such a big job that whole manufacturing plants do nothing else but make them.  Most marbles are made of clay.  A marbles factory is much like a small brickyard.  Workmen shovel clay into a pugmill, where great wheels pulverize it and drop it into a bin below.  A conveyor belt carries the pulverized clay to storage bins and these bins again feed the clay into the pugmill.  In the bottom of the pugmill are round holes.  Through these holes the clay is thrust, emerging in long strings.  Workmen cut these strings into eighteen-inch rolls and carry them to the clay shops.  In the clay shops the rolls of clay go into troughs that are slit on either side.  Workmen cut the rolls into uniform bits with a saw that fits into the slits in the troughs.  The bits are, roughly, the size of the marbles that are being manufactured.  Now comes the shaping of the marbles.  The bits of clay go to the marble makers.  These workers place the bits side by side in a grooved plaster of Paris mold, one bit to each groove.  Then they pass an oblong plaster block over the clay bits, rolling them until each is round and symmetrical.  The speed of these marble makers, many of them young women [and children], is astonishing.  The best of them will turn out 25,000 to 30,000 marbles in one day. 

The American Marble & Toy Manufacturing Company came to an end in 1904 when a fire burnt the factory to the ground.  The morning after the fire, every little boy in Akron could be found pillaging around the burnt-out remains of the factory, stuffing their pockets full of marbles and penny toys.  This forced the mayor to call out the police to guard the factory and keep the children out of harm’s way.  This became a losing battle, though, so the mayor ordered the factory site buried.  (Blue Santa.us and The American Toy Marble Museum)