FLAT GLASS MANUFACTURING BEFORE FLOAT

This chapter provides an overview on the manufacturing of flat glass before the Float process. Before float glass there were two different quality grades of flat glass: Window Glass and Plate Glass. Going back to the middle of the 19th century, common window glass was made from hand-blown cylinder glass while plate glass was made by casting from pot melted glass that required grinding and polishing to yield a better but substantially more expensive product. After the turn of the century, window glass production saw improvements with the development of a machine-drawn cylinder glass method and then vertically-drawn sheet glass methods. Around the turn of the century, a skilled glass worker named John Lubbers convinced the owner of the glass factory, James Chambers, to try to convert the hand-blown cylinder glass process to a machine-drawn cylinder glass process. Between 1900 and 1906 John Lubbers worked to perfect his process, but James Chambers went bankrupt from his investment in the development.