" Meantime he has turned out several
hundred other inventions, many of them much more useful and profitable,
but I imagine that he takes less satisfaction in any of them than he
does in having solved the problem that he undertook fifty years ago.
The reason for the prize was that the game on the billiard table was
getting more popular and the game in the African jungle was getting
scarcer, especially elephants having tusks more than 2-7/16 inches in
diameter. The raising of elephants is not an industry that promises as
quick returns as raising chickens or Belgian hares. To make a ball
having exactly the weight, color and resiliency to which billiard
players have become accustomed seemed an impossibility. Hyatt tried
compressed wood, but while he did not succeed in making billiard balls
he did build up a profitable business in stamped checkers and dominoes.
Setting type in the way they did it in the sixties was hard on the
hands. And if the skin got worn thin or broken the dirty lead type were
liable to infect the fingers.
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