Balls and ivory
For years, the Asian elephants suffered from the guns of hunters who were trying to get a piece of the profitable ivory market. Back then, the once considered "white gold" of the animal kingdom was used extensively for works of art, piano keys and billiard balls. At first, billiard balls were made of spherical wood. But because wooden billiard balls did not roll well, experts started looking for other materials.
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Their research led them to ivory. They found out that billiard balls made from the ivory exhibit far better properties than wood or any other materials, for that matter. It was the Asian elephant's tusks and not the African elephant's which was considered the best source of ivory for making billiard balls. When fashioned into billiard balls, Asian elephant's ivory were of the perfect size, weight, strength and had beauty to boot. |
The demand for this new type of balls found another market for Asian elephant tusks which added more fuel to the already on fire situation of elephant hunting and poaching. An Indian, Ceylonese, or Indo-Chinese elephant tusk could only produce four or five quality billiard balls. Imagine the number of elephants that needed to be slaughtered to complete a set of billiard balls. The billiard balls were made by New York and Chicago master ivory turners. They would shave blocks of ivory and fashion them into perfect spheres. But, however perfect these balls were, nothing could hide the fact that they contributed to the rapid decline of the wild elephant population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At one time, it was estimated that twelve thousand elephants die each year in order to supply the ivory market. However, as the elephant population grew smaller, the price of ivory increases until it reached the point where it was too expensive to use it for making billiard balls.
Brunswick, a lead manufacturer of billiard balls, offered a $10,000 prize to anyone who could find a replacement for ivory. A celluloid material similar to ivory won the price. However, because of the properties of the celluloid the billiard balls sometimes explode during the game. But the evolution of the plastics made it more possible to create non-exploding balls. Nowadays, billiard balls are made from high quality phenolic resin. The average billiard ball measures 2.25" in diameter and weighs 5.5 oz.. The cue, on the other hand, weighs 6 oz.
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