Moderne Glass history

Work on optical glass had also been started by Carl Zeiss at Jena, Ger., in 1846.

The first beer pasteurized in glass was produced in Copenhagen in 1870.

After 1890, the development, manufacture and use of glass increased rapidly.

Mechanical technology for mass production began in the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution with Michael Owens`s invention of an automatic bottle blowing machine in 1903 that could produce 2500 bottles per hour.

In 1932 W.H. Zachariasen published The Atomic Arrangement in Glass, a classic paper that had perhaps the most influence of any published work on glass science.

In 1934, at the Corning Glass Works in New York, a 200-inch-diameter borosilicate glass mirror for the Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory was cast and annealed over eight months, cooling at a rate of approximately 1° F per day.

The development of the twin grinding and polishing machine in 1935 at the Pilkington Brothers works in Doncaster, Eng., made it possible for plate to be made by horizontal flow through a double-roller process and then ground and polished on-line.

Seventy-five years later, in 1942, electric-arc fusion-cast refractories became commercially available—particularly the ZAC refractory (35 percent zirconia, 53 percent alumina, and 12 percent silica) developed by Gordon Fulcher at Corning Glass Works in New York.

In the late 1950`s Sir Alastair Pilkington introduced a float glass production method by which 90% of flat glass is still manufactured today.

Harvey Littleton, the “Father of The Studio Glass Movement” and an early advocate of university education in the arts, held the first glassblowing seminar focused on the studio artist in 1962 at the Toledo Museum of Art.