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The Pre-freeze or Pre-freese myth (eyelashes on Akros)!

 
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2011 2:29 pm    Post subject: The Pre-freeze or Pre-freese myth (eyelashes on Akros)! Reply with quote

Here's a post that I made a few years ago on another forum. Thought that it would be good to preserve it here, in our new category. Feel free to add any additional info.

Galen, can you dig up your pic of the voided patent that you mentioned in the same post?


Quote:
Here is a pic of the voided patent that shows a gob feeder. I hate the prefreese BS line more than any silly name folks make up. It is used to dupe newbies on ebay and by a few folks that have been duped. It is time people stop using it at all. This has been brought up so many times in the last few years that anyone that uses it in an Ebay description probably knows better. And if they are selling marbles on Ebay they should know the truth if they are using certian descriptions. IMHO Peace,Galen



The Pre-Freese Myth!

I thought that it might be a good time to clarify the myth that the so-called Pre-freese "eyelashes", (seen on some Akros) is an indicator of the manufacturing date or whatever other B.S. you see in some ebay listings! Wink

Many theories have been disproven since machine-made marble collecting first became popular. Unfortunately "the books" are still out there with this erroneous information and new collectors reading these do not realize that it's no longer valid information. Even Alan on his old page (which is being updated) http://replay.web.archive.org/200101252312/http://marblealan.com/akro/ has information that he has not had time to correct and/or update. This would be the case here with his information on "pre-freese". The following is the excerpt from the page where he references the "Freese improvement". I'm sure that he won't be including it his in new page.

Quote:

Uniques are patches that have an opaque white base with a wispy brushed brown patch covering about one third of the marble, with a small space on the patch that allows the underlying white to show. The Hero is the same type of marble but lacks the space. Both of these are pre-"Freese improvement" marbles. Collectively, these two types are often known as "birds," because when viewed from one angle the patches have a shape suggestive of the breast and head of a songbird. "Grebes" have a reddish orange to orange brown patch; "brown thrashers" have a dark brownish red patch; "golden tawnies" have a yellowish orange to orangish brown patch; and "rainbows" have all the colors seen on the previous three varieties.


Some corkscrews will possess feathering near the ends of the spirals, manifested as fine "fingers" of color extending from tiny crescent-shaped crimp marks; as mentioned earlier, this trait indicates manufacture prior to the "Freese improvement" of the mid-1920s.
The "fingers" or "eyelashes" are shear marks that some collectors mistakenly believe were eliminated after Ira Freese invented his gob-feeder in 1922. Not true. A gob feeder has nothing to do with these shear marks or even making the marble rounder. In fact, his gob feeder never worked, never produced marbles and the patent was voided anyway.

Below is more detailed information about this, that is from akronmarbles.com's marble related glossary, under "freese/fresse".
Here's the link:

http://akronmarbles.com/glossary_of_marble_related_terms.htm#P
Quote:

FRESSE, IRA: An employee of The Akro Agate Company who experimented with automatic gob feed technology in the early 1920’s, applied for two US Patents 1,529,947 and 1,529,948 in 1922. Like all early US experiments with gob feed technology, these efforts were not successful. Had these patents actually worked they’d have been the most valuable patents in the world glass industry earning many hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty fees. The first practical automatic gob feeder, applied for in 1925, by Ernst Peiler, patent purchased by a trust of major US glass companies in 1926, known as The Hartford Empire Co.; first adapted to the manufacture of marbles in 1927 at The Christensen Agate Co. under contract with Hartford who patented same. The Akro Agate Company licensed its first gob feeder from the Hartford Empire in the fall of 1928. Both Fresse gob feeder patents were voided in the Federal Courts.

FREESE IMPROVEMENT: A term used by some collectors under the mistaken belief that due to Freese receiving a patent it must have worked. Mistakenly believed by some collectors that the Freese patents had something to do with eliminating the shear-marks on a machine-made marble to make them smoother or more spherical, which is actually a function of a marble forming machine and not a gob feeder, of which Fresse patented. Also, mistakenly believed by some collectors to have something to do with off-setting the helically grooved cylinders of a marble forming machine.

FRESSE, PRE-: The term “Pre-Fresse” is used by collectors to identify a design feature appearing on Akro Agate Company “Prize Name” marble (called Popeye by collectors) that resemble tiny feather -like features on the demarcation-line between two colors of glass. Collectors perceive this as a diagnostic feature revealing the marble’s date of manufacture as previous to Ira Fresse’s invention of The Akro Agate Company’s gob feeder, or pre 1922 and that Popeye marbles manufactured with the Fresse gob feeder do not carry these same feather-like features. The problem with the term (besides the fact the Fresse gob feeder didn’t work, never produced marbles and its patent was voided in federal courts) as presently used by collectors, a marble with a Pre-Fresse design feature is a gob fed marble made almost 5 years before the first successful use of a gob feeder and almost a decade before The Akro Agate Company obtained a working gob feeder.

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lstmmrbls
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PostPosted: Sat May 21, 2011 11:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is a Freese pic

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