Marble (toy) of marble games to a meadow outside the town. It is unknown where marbles were first manufactured, but the "original" marbles were designated "made in Germany". The game has become popular throughout the US and other countries. Ceramic marbles entered inexpensive mass production in the 1870s. A German glassblower invented marble scissors, a device for making marbles, in 1846. The first mass-produced toy marbles (clay) made in the US were made in Akron, Ohio, by S. C. Dyke, in the early 1890s. Some of the first US-produced glass marbles were also made in Akron, by James Harvey Leighton. In 1903,
Elgin Marbles that "the Greeks were guilty of excessive cleaning of the marbles before they were brought to Britain." During the international symposium on the cleaning of the marbles, organised by the British Museum in 1999, curator Ian Jenkins, deputy keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities, remarked that "The British Museum is not infallible, it is not the Pope. Its history has been a series of good intentions marred by the occasional cock-up, and the 1930s cleaning was such a cock-up". Nonetheless, he claimed that the prime cause for the damage inflicted upon the marbles was the 2000-year-long weathering on the Acropolis.