Meanwhile in Toledo

At the age of ten, Michael Owens, a West Virginia miner's son, was shoveling coal into the furnace of a Wheeling glass factory.  At the age of 15, he was a skilled glass blower.  Working as a manager of Edward Libbey's glass factory in Toledo, Ohio several years later, Owens designed his own bottle blowing machine.  The simple idea was a piston pump taking a heated lump of molten glass into a mold, then reversing the pump to blow glass into the shape of a bottle.

Owen's process was patented in 1895 and within a decade, it was totally automatic.  The machine consisted of more the 9000 parts and with two men operating it, could produce 2500 bottles an hour!  Owens' glass bottle blowing machine would also make it possible to provide a quantity of electric light bulbs in the future.

Owens, with no business experience, teamed up with Edward Libbey, a New Englandaer, who inherited his father's glassware factory.  Libbey was a businessman with imagination and organization.  His factory built in 1888 in Toledo, Ohio, was a glass factory where large quantities of natural gas could fire the furnaces.  He knew Owens had a revolutionary process and financed the perfection of the machine and put it to work in his factories.  Libbey and Owens became partners and began to manufacture the machine for the world market.  (Libbey-Owens glass factory photo on right)

In 1901 the Toledo Museum of Art was organized by Libbey, and in 1912 he built the first building, making the model for the modern role of museums in American education.

Next time...from bottles to sheet glass
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Today in Pioneer History: "On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman to receive a medical degree from Geneva Medical Institute in Geneva, New York. She faced opposition from all her fellow students and the medical profession but Blackwell pursued her calling with an iron will and dedicated her life to treating the sick and furthering the cause of women in medicine.  You Go Girl!!