HANDICRAFT
MAY 4, 2022
The Long And Gleaming History Of Marble
The history of marble dates back from 3000 years ago and with looks that changed through times, becoming like we know today.
The marbles game is a traditional type of game that is round and made of glass, clay, or agate. The size of the marble generally has a diameter of half-inch or 1.25 cm from end to end. Marbles can be used as children’s games that are recreational, educational, and competitive.
Before the advent of video games or online games like today, marble game is one of the traditional games that children like to play to spend their free time. It has some other names in Indonesia, such as gundu and guli.
HISTORY
In 3000 BC, marbles were made of stone or clay. The oldest marbles in the collection of The British Museum in London date back to 2000-1700 BC. The marbles were found on Crete at the Minoan site of Petsofa.
In Roman times, the game of marbles was also widely played. In fact, it is part of the Saturnalia festival, which is held just before Christmas. At that time everyone gave each other a bag of seeds that served as marbles as a sign of friendship. Based on historical records, the popularity of this game began to appear in the 12th century in France.
In 1864, a German glazier named Elias Johann Christoph Simon carl Greiner invented a tool called the marbelschere (“marble scissors”), which were actually molds to standardize the marble-making process.
The marbles that were originally one color became colorful like candy. This technology soon spread throughout Europe and America. Marble was popular in England and other European countries from the 16th to 19th centuries. After that, it only spread to America. The material for making it is clay and is produced on a large scale.
PRODUCTION PROCESS
The materials needed to produce marbles consist of: sand, silica, soda lime, and other solid materials instead of plastic, as color pigments and decorations in them. Soda lime which is a mixture of calcium hydroxide with sodium/potassium hydroxide is used to absorb carbon dioxide in the smelting process.
In addition to these materials, there are also marbles made from cullet or using screw glass. The process of making marbles consists of four stages, namely: melting/melting of materials, injection process, cutting or forming, and sorting stage :
• In the melting stage, these materials are put into a tank which is then heated to a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius. This process takes about 28 hours.
• Then proceed to the second stage, namely injection. The mixture of ingredients that have melted like lava is then flowed into another tank to be injected with other pigment ingredients, so that the marbled mixture becomes colorful.
• The third stage is cutting and shaping. Thick liquid marbles in the form of lumps of glass flowed on a metal running and cut into pieces automatically to a certain size (eg 2 cm).
• Furthermore, the glass cubes are flowed into a ball forming machine so that the final products that come out are marble balls that have been finished. To maintain quality, it is also necessary to sort out the marbles that are not perfectly shaped.
MARBLE GAMES
Activities in the game of marbles, such as throwing and flicking, can train fine and gross motor skills at school age. The better the motor skills, visual coordination and concentration, the more proficient the child shoots the marbles.
One of the popular marble games is called the Circle of Marbles. All the children put a marble in the circle. Then all the children stand about a meter from the circle, behind a line. Alternately, toss another marble into the circle. The child whose marble is farthest from the circle may play first.
What we need to know together is that these kinds of marble games can only be played by a minimum of 2 people, more than that is allowed. Ideally the number of participants who take part in the game is around 5 to 8 people.
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