Glass and Glass Manufacture

The discovery of making glass is attributed to the early Phoenicians. Pliny relates that certain mariners who had a cargo of soda salt, having landed on the banks of a river in...

The term “glass,” in a general sense, is applied to the hard, brittle, non-crystalline, transparent, opaque or translucent vitreous substance which results from fusing silica wi...

The main essential and peculiar property of glass is its transparency. When subjected to a gradually increasing temperature, glass becomes softened, and whilst hot it is plastic...

=Soda Silicate= is made from a fusion of 100 parts of sand with 50 parts of soda carbonate and 5 parts of charcoal. The charcoal is added to facilitate the decomposition. The fu...

In colouring glass, either or several of the following colorific oxides may be used. They are added to the batch before fusion. Varying proportions are added, according to the d...

Decolorizers are the agents employed by the glass maker to neutralise or subdue the objectionable tints given by the colouring action of small traces of iron oxide, which exists...

Of the greatest importance to the glass manufacturer are the refractory materials upon which the life of his furnace and pots depends. A few notes giving a description of them a...

The pots within which the raw materials are melted are set within a strongly heated chamber called the glass furnace. The old circular type of English furnace usually contains e...

Glass house pots are large hollow vessels made of refractory in which the glass manufacturer melts the materials of which his glass is composed, and which retain the molten meta...

Owing to the peculiar structure of glass, and its liability to fly or collapse when exposed to sudden changes of temperature, a process of annealing becomes necessary in order t...

The tools used by the glass blowers are few and simple. The greater part of the crude form is produced by blowing out the hot glass into a spherical or pear-shaped bulb and regu...

=Crown Glass= is made in the form of circular flat discs about 4 ft. in diameter. The workman, by repeated gatherings, collects sufficient glass on the end of his blow-iron unti...

Laboratory and chemical glassware consists of thin blown ware in the form of flasks, beakers, test tubes, etc., used in chemical operations. Most of these goods are blown in hin...

The manufacture of optical glass forms a very important section of the glass industry, and presents some of the most difficult problems the glass maker has to deal with. It is i...

Certain methods of decorating glass are carried out whilst the glass is being made by the workmen. Other methods consist in decorating the glass after it has been made, such as...

The continental methods of glassmaking differ so much from the English methods that a few remarks giving comparisons will be of interest. It is noticeable that chemical and engi...