interesting, just found this.

So the word started looking for a substitute for Ivory, and Plastics were invented.

Vitalite Balls:
The Albany Billiard Ball Company is possibly the earliest successful plastics firm and certainly one of the oldest plastics companies in the world. The business was started in 1868 on Albany's South End. The company was renamed, in September, 1977, the Albany-Hyatt Billiard Ball Company. John Wesley Hyatt was one of the company's founders and the American inventor of celluloid. Celluloid, besides being the base of photographic film, was a substitute for ivory, long the prime substance in billiard ball manufacture. The Hyatt "composition" ball, with a celluloid base, dominated the sport until the 1960s.

Crystalate Balls:
Crystalate is an early plastic, a formulation of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol invented in the late 19th century and patented by American inventor George Henry Burt. It is best known as a material for gramophone records produced in the UK by Crystalate Manufacturing Company (although Burt's own US-based Globe Record Company also manufactured Crystalate records), and for moulded billiards, pool and snooker balls, as produced by the Endolithic Company (UK), later the Composition Billiard Ball Company.

Crystalate was based on Bonzoline, a plastic produced by John Wesley Hyatt's US-based Albany Billiard Ball Company. Birt, a former Albany employee, began manufacturing what was essentially Bonzoline in the UK in 1900 as crystalate with Percy Warnford-Davis, under the Endolithic name. While Crystalate as a plastic material is obsolete and no longer manufactured, like Celluloid and Bakelite it is commonly encountered by collectors of vintage and antique goods, because many products were made using the substance. The plastic was even mandated in the UK for making billiard balls by the Billiards Association and Control Council in 1926.

Super Crystalate Balls
Super Crystalate is a brand name for a composition material, a cast rather than moulded resin, first produced by Composition Billiard Ball in 1972 as a replacement for Crystalate.

Aramith Balls:
Saluc S.A. was established in Belgium in 1923 and started making Billiard balls when their traditional chemical industry dried up after World War II. They started making Phenolic Resin balls in the 1960s and quickly proved to be a superior ball. They have dominated the market now for decades, and have four prime sets of balls;

Posted By: shoddy, May 7, 21:10:16