CHAPTER XXXI.

POTTERY, PLASTICS, PORCELAINS, STONEWARE, GLASS, RUBBER, CELLULOID.

Brickmaking from the Earliest Ages to Nineteenth Century.-- Pottery, its Origin Unknown.--Its Evolution.--Women the First Inventors in Ceramic and Textile Arts.--Progress of Man Traced in Pottery.--Review of Pottery from Time of Homer to the Wedgwood Ware of Eighteenth Century.--Labour-Saving Devices of Nineteenth.--Operations in Brickmaking and Machinery.--The Celebrated Pug Mill, the Pioneer.--Moulding and Pressing.-- Drying and Burning.--The Slow Growth of Methods.--Useful Contrivances never wholly Supplanted.--Modern Heat Distributors.--Hoffman’s Kilns.--Wedgwood’s Pottery in Eighteenth.--Siemens’ Regenerators in Nineteenth, and other Kilns.--Susan Frackelton’s.--The Filter Press.--Chinese and French Porcelains--Battam’s Imitations of Marbles and Plaster Moulds.--Faience.--Porcelain Moulding and Colours.--Atomisers and Backgrounds.--Rookwood Pottery and Miss Fry.--Enamelled Ware.--Artificial Stone.--Modern Cements.--Glass the Sister of Pottery.--The Inventors of Blowing, Cutting, Trimming by Shears and Diamond Cutting, Ancient and Unknown.--Glass Windows and Mirrors Unknown to the Poor Prior to Eighteenth Century.-- The Nineteenth Century the Scientific Age of Glass.--Its Commercial Development.--Crystal Palace of 1851.--Description of Modern Discoveries.--Materials.--Colours and Faraday’s Discovery in 1824.--Gaffield’s Extensive Experiments in Producing Colours.--The German Glass Works at Jena of Abbe and Schott.--Methods Followed for Different Varieties.-- Machines for Different Purposes.--Cut Glass and other Beautiful Ware.--Cameo Cutting.--Porcelain Electroplating.-- Rubber, History of, in Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.--Sketch of Goodyear.--His Inventions and Present State of the Art.--Glass Wool of Volcano of Kilauea and Krupp’s Blast Furnaces. 457

INVENTIONS IN THE CENTURY.