Glass production

Glass melting technology has passed through several stages

* Glass was manufactured in open pits, ca. 3000 B.C. until the invention of the blowpipe in ca. 50 B.C.

* The mobile wood-fired melting pot furnace was used until around the 17th century by traveling glass manufacturers.

* Introduction of manganese oxide for making crystal-clear glass (cristallo) in Murano, Venice in the early 16th century.

* In 1688, a process for casting flat glass was developed by Bernard Perrot, which led to glass becoming a much more commonly used material.

* The local pot furnace, fired by wood and coal was used between 1600 and 1850.

* The cylinder method of creating flat glass was used in the United States for the first time in the 1820s. It was used to commercially produce windows.[citation needed]

* The invention of the glass pressing machine in 1827 allowed the mass production of inexpensive glass products.

* Continuous glass pot furnace (developed by F. Siemens, 1860), followed by tank furnaces, and the electric furnaces of 1910.

* Hand-blown sheet glass was replaced in the 20th century by rolled plate glass.

* Systematic development of optical glass compositions by E. Abbe, O. Schott, and C. Zeiss in Jena, Germany, starting in about 1880.
* Start of fully automatic manufacture of glass bottles (Owens bottle machine), flat glass (Colburn process), light bulbs, and tubing in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.

* The float glass process was developed in the 1950s by the company Pilkington.

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