H. A. Robinson, a tennis court builder based in New York City, wanted to make tennis courts of a newer material, increasingly popular in Europe. A new material of mixed crushed brick or roof tiles created a playing surface like a clay court but which dried much faster.

He discovered that the stone dust particles left over from the stone crushing operation of the Funkhouser Company was just what he needed to make a better tennis court.

According to "Warfield's" magazine (November, 1990), in an interview with Richard Funkhouser, The Funkhouser Company's early engineers built an experimental tennis court in Hagerstown made of patches of different combinations and consistancies of the igneous basalt dust they mined.