history of flat glass

"Michael J. Owens, a glassmaker since the age of 10, moved to Ohio to join a start-up glass company founded by Edward Libbey in 1888 and began America's first industry -- glassmaking. Libbey financed Owens' dream of creating a glassblowing machine, the most significant development in glassmaking since the invention of the blowpipe more than 3,000 years ago.
Owens' success came in 1903. That's when he made the first automatic glass bottle-making machine that could create bottles so quickly and cheaply it facilitated the growth of numerous industries that bottled everything from food and beverages to household chemicals. He went on to help develop massproduction techniques for window glass and helped guide the company into research that eventually led to the production of fiberglass."

http://www.londoncrownglass.co.uk/History.html

wiki says there is record of blown plate glass in London in 1620. The process you describe is known as cylinder blown sheet glass and widely used up into the end of the 19th century.

Try googling Flat glass and there is also float glass.

Blown (and then flattened) glass predates rolled glass (through a set of mangles and used through late 19th century IIRC), which was superceded by float glass (essentially poured onto a bed of Hg) which is the current method of producing glass for windows. Field ID: Blown - wavy with lots of round bubbles

Rolled - Oblong bubbles with some variance in thickness

Float - Smooth as proverbial glass - no bubbles

;

ktel60

I believe that you are referring to molten Tin (Sn) float glass method as Mercury vapors are toxic.

Another method of window glass long ago was to take a blob of molten glass and spin it into a disk. This was than cut square. The finished window will have circular waves surrounding a bulls eye in the middle. Much like a Fresnel lens.

The old American Window Glass Company was located in Arnold, PA. As the glass was formed, it came vertically upward from a tank. and a union glasscutter cut it for length. This was prior to 1950.

P E Bobimm

Hi RHABE;

A GA to you Sir for an excellent piece! your story of course mentions the name Zeiss without whose precision optics would have rendered the Kreigsmarine with no better range finding equipment than the RN.

My only small contribution to this topic is the name of Pilkington as I believe it was they who perfected the float glass production process. I imagine that similar developments were proceeding elsewhere and claiming anything as being exclusive is of limited worth.

Happy New Year.

Massey.

Hi Massey 726,

don't forget the early London based microscope makers that worked at the leading edge until near 1860.

Also the Polish-French contributions from early polarising prisms (Napoleon times) up to Nomarski in the 1950ies and his beautiful inventions of interference contrast microscopes, up to nowadays big manufacturing possibilities (the 8m flexible mirror blank made by Schott from Zerodur glass-ceramics was finally ground and polished near Paris.)

And India with the work of Raman to enable Raman spectroscopy.

And Mexico with the beautiful work of Malacara - a vast bunch of new interferometers.

I don't know much about the early work in Japan, but I am sure there have been pioneers too.

Look to the history of LOMO,Leningrad/St.Petersburg, with beautiful and rigid optics like Maksutov ( I have one 100mm that survived a 1.6m fall onto wooden floor with no (below 1 arcsec) damage except mechanical, still at the theoretical boundary. The eyepiece was scrap but the main tube a marvel.

And look to the US: famous names, well known in interferometry, adaptive optics, ellipsometry, large optics (Palomar, Keck, Hubble Space telescope, coming James Webb), Lasers ...

Optics is a vast field that does never seem to be complete. (Micro-optics, fiber-optics, any of the new optical or non-optical microscopes).

Any deeper interest should dig the SPIE milestone series of important optical innovations.

RHABE

(My interest was existing since a boy and boosted in the 70ies by adopting a flexure hinge I did invent to ESA International Scientific Observer - satellite, serving as the elastic scanner hinge and in the filter wheel to set precise filter positions. The same is adopted for James Webb scope although I had a much better one 10 years ago, the conventional wisdom: never touch a running system, let Zeiss decide to stay with the old approach.)

I knowledge goes back to first glass formation was based on high lead glass nature showed and human copied in Egypt desert when human observed flowing glass and then they took that process and copied it to make float glass on top of mercury and liquid which is now we now id dirty oil

They we before BC and still found buried in these area with. Indian made flat glass on the top of liquid copper few thousand years backs.

Hi Masyood,

the mercury story is a fairy tale - maybe invented by Donald Duck arguing his rich uncle Dagobert to spend some of his many gold coins.

At room temperature mercury evaporates so fast that you will poison yourself to death within a few years.

At 200°C this will take only minutes.

Glass needs 550°C to lower viscosity to honey-like flow.

Copper: maybe possible, where did you get this story?

RHABE

I have made glass which is liquid at room temperature. Very used glass with 80:20 lead and boron will have melting at 450C. Lead -Tellurium- vanadium oxide glass has melting of 375C. Gallium oxide doped with arsenic used fir IR is having melting of 200C and can keep going but provided few examples so we two are in same set of mind as per as definition of glass.

If you need I will provide more examples with actual compositions

Hi Masyood,

the IR transmitting glass may be very interesting. Do you have a transmission curve?

If I am talking about glass I inexpressedly assume that the glass is only very slowly soluble in water.

(In contrary to sodium- or potassium-silicates).

RHABE

We use liquid glass from Home depot to fix our cement cracks in the driveway. This glass is 25 wt.% NaOH and 75wt% SiO2. Glass based on its formulation may not survive opening can full with glass in air with average humidity which is 60% or more.

I do not have I have not worked in this field. But during my Ph.D. tenure at Alfred University, New York few of my friends worked under Dr. Shelby and Prof. Bill La Course on this subject. Shelby and Lacouse has authored wook on this subject and if you are not able to get let me know if I pass by that site during customer visit will try to pick up few curves for you and if you have any specific interest then you can talk to me and I will connect you to correct person

I would be very interested in the compositions of some of these very low melting point glasses.

Some optical, IR and UV curves would be interesting if you can point me to where I can get them.

Hi,

an introduction may be -the book from Musicant: Optical Materials - may be you know this since long,

and naturally the catalogues of Schott, Corning and LOMO.

Look also at the IRTRAN glasses.

I agree with you that more data may be most interesting.

RHABE

The history of glass in India

Glass has existed in India since ancient times. Archaeological surveys have unearthed glass pieces and crucibles that can be dated back 2,000 years, in which glass was made near Basti in Uttar Pradesh. The Mahabharatamakes a mention of glass, as does another ancient text,Yuktic Kalpataru, which talks of the effect of drinking water out of a glass tumbler to be the same as drinking out of a crystal cup.

With the advent of Mughal rule, came a lifestyle that was sensual and sophisticated. Although not complete hedonists, the Mughals believed in living well and surrounding themselves with objects of beauty. Thus glass bowls, tumblers and above all, bottles containing the sweet-smelling 'attars' became very popular. As new scents were discovered and created, bottles in different shapes and colours were fashioned out of glass. Some were embossed with gold or coloured designs, others engraved with delicate patterns and motifs.

With time, the uses of glass diversified. Glass objects such as phials, jars, lamps and lamp chimneys, globes and even walking sticks, were made, and continue to be produced using this material.

Glass beads

India has a long and distinguished history of making glass beads. The country's abundant and accessible supplies of a wide range of semi-precious quartz materials such as chalcedony, agate, onyx, jasper and rock crystal won it the reputation of a major glass bead centre. Evidence shows that by 1,000 BC, glass beads were being made in north India. Small drawn glass beads were a speciality, and seem to have originated in India, after which the craft spread to East Africa and South-East Asia through AD 1000. The main centres of production were Brahmapuri and Arikamedu in south India.

With time the craft died down, but was revived, mostly at Firozabad and Varanasi, which continue to operate as important centres of glass bead making.

Glass bangles

Glass bangles are traditionally worn by women from the day they are married. The death of a husband is indicated by the smashing of these glass bangles, a sign that the woman is now a widow.

Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh is where, what must be the world's largest bangle making industry, exists. The town's narrow streets and lanes are crowded with people carrying masses of brightly coloured bangles.

Glass bangles are made as tight springs of coloured glass. These are then cut using diamond blades, and are later hardened by baking. When they are cooled, some are patterned with nicks cut into the outer surface. They are then decorated with golden paint or bright glass jewels.

Another craft that uses glass is painting. The south, particularly the Tanjore area in Tamil Nadu, is known for its resplendent method of ornamentation, particularly on paintings. The paintings, mostly religious in theme, are richly decorated and studded with glass.