Figure 1.--Here we see a Diablo post card with a boy playing with a top. It was mailed in 1907. I'm not sure what it says at the bottom. I'm not sure what kind of top this was.
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Figure 1.--Here we see a Diablo post card with a boy playing with a top. It was mailed in 1907. I'm not sure what it says at the bottom. I'm not sure what kind of top this was. |
We have found a variety of French images showing children playing with different gypes od tops. Many of these are postcard images. These images are staged, idealized images, but still of interest. One French accout in the 1890s described three kinds of tops.
First the kind you whipped with an eelskin to make it whirl. That kind the boys called the sabot. Sometimes the eelskin twisted about the top and sent it flying through a windowpane.
A top with an iron point which
you threw with a whipcord furnished a much more exciting game. You first drew a circle on the asphalt and tried to fling the top so that it fell right in the center and drove away the other tops across the chalk line. Better still, if it lighted on another top and split it in half. For that reason the boys preferred tops of boxwood, smooth and yellow, and practically unbreakable.
The third kind of top was a rarity, the Dutch top or mechanical top that whirled all by itself because it had a spring inside. That top was generally a New Year's present that you carried to school in secret just once to show the other boys. At home it was kept locked up in the cupboard with the toys that could not be played with every day.
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