Artificial Billiard Balls
www.mrs.org/publications/bulletin HISTORICAL NOTE Artificial Billiard Balls In his 1859 book The Game of Billiards, and to printers like Hyatt for burn pre- lished the Albany Billiard Ball Company, Michael Phelan, co-owner of the Phelan vention; it also served as a coating for and also the Albany Dental Plate & Collender Company, the largest manu- photographic plates. Company—although this effort was occa- facturer of billiard balls in the United One day in 1868, Hyatt found that a sionally plagued by reports of exploding States, lamented the state of his raw bottle of collodion in his cabinet had dentures by cigar smokers and com- material supply. The ivory obtained from spilled, and that a hard, thick, transpar- plaints about the taste of camphor that the tusks of the elephants of Ceylon, he ent material had formed. He thought col- the dentures retained. The Hyatts later said, was superior to that of the African lodion might make an excellent coating combined both companies to form the elephant for his purposes, being more for his billiard balls. In his excitement, he Celluloid Manufacturing Company. They solid and less friable. However, the cost convinced his brother Isaiah Smith Hyatt, never submitted their billiard balls to the of this ivory was “dreadfully dear.” until then a newspaper editor, to join him Phelan & Collender Company for consid- Adding to the problem was the fact that in his experimentation. eration for the $10,000 prize, however, only 1 in 50 tusks was of sufficient quali- and it is probable that the money was ty to make a billiard ball, due to the “[Phelan] offered a prize of never awarded.
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