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!! 

Ribbons of Glass

A new technology was needed to make glass affordable and in large enough quantities in America.  Henry Bessemer, of later steel fame, was experimenting with a process that would make glass into a continuous process rather than batch by batch or separate sheets.  He hoped to make glass into long broad ribbons of uniform thickness. But he needed several things...

One, a gas fired furnace as Bessemer needed, was slow in coming to America.  Wood was cheaper and the call for glass smaller in America.  About 1880 a method of drawing  a flat sheet of glass directly from the furnace was devised.  A sheet called a "bait" was dipped into molten glass and adhered to the glass.  Then the bait was drawn upward to pull the molten glass into a sheet.  However, once again it was difficult to keep the glass uniform in thickness or width.

By the end of the 19th century, Americans were actually beginning to take the lead in glass making innovations.  Bessemer was a part of this movement.  The canning industry, with the demand for glass jars was another.  Improvements also included Mason's screw top lid for glass jars which was patented in 1888.  With the improvements in heating and canning, the next step was the semi-automatic machine for making bottles.  This most important machine since the invention of glass blowing iron for making glass containers came from a an unexpected place...

Next time...A Kid in Toledo
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Today in Pioneer History: "On January 20, 1930, Charles Lindbergh flew an experimental glider into San Diego, California and became the 9th pilot in the United States to receive a glider's license.

Crown Glass

Glass in America was used for creating space and conquering the weather.  Glass went from prized artistic decoration - colorful, reflective and brilliant - to becoming a basic building material.  Most of the techniques came from the Old World, England and France.  These techniques, along with the American glassmakers' genius, made glass into a necessity for large numbers of people  and large purposes.  But economics came first.

The common way to make glass until the 19th century was a process called "crown glass" or "bulls eye glass" (antique window on right). The process was quite elaborate and required a team of 10 men and boys.  A globe of glass was blown by pipe, then rolled onto an iron table until it became a cone.  Then an iron rod was attached to the cone end opposite the pipe and the pipe was removed, leaving the hot glass open at one end.

Skill was required to then spin the cone and reheat it until it flatten out into a disk with the iron rod still attached at the center, or the "crown."   The spinning continued as the disk cooled and became stiff.  The disk was cut free from the iron rod and taken to the kiln for finishing.

These circular sheets were small and became even smaller when cut square.  The "crown" mark in the center was always there to tell how the pane was made.  The thickness was uneven due to it being blown glass - so the edges varied from thick to thin.  This process was prominent in America until 1830. 

Next time...1830 and beyond
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Today in Pioneer History:  On January 9, 1493, Christopher Columbus mistakes manatees for mermaids while sailing near the Dominican Republic.  He describes them as "not half as beautiful as they are painted."