Glassmaking.

1895

Much mystery has in times past attached to the art of glassmaking. It was formerly the custom for the workmen, in setting pots in the glass furnace, to protect themselves from the heat by dressing in the skins of wild animals from head to foot. To this queer garb were added glass goggle eyes, and thus the most hideous looking monsters were readily presented to the eye. Show was made of themselves in the neighborhood to the infinite alarm of children, old women and others. — Boston Herald.


In 1920.

Mrs. New Woman — Be calm, my dear. I think there's a woman under the bed!
Mr. New Woman — Oh, Maria, do be careful! If you shoot her, try not to hurt her very much. — Brooklyn Eagle.

Doors Made of Glass

1895

But They Have Every Appearance of Highly Polished Wood.

Two Boston inventors have secured a patent for a process of making glass veneers which have many peculiar properties. This invention relates primarily to the production of ornamental glass, which may be either semitransparent or opaque and is made to represent highly polished wood of any description. It is intended to be applicable for veneering wherever required and is particularly adapted for vestibule and other doors, the exterior of the glass having the appearance of highly polished wood, while in the interior of the house it will appear semitransparent.

In carrying the invention into practice a sheet of ground or plain glass is taken of any desired size and clouded the same on one side with a liquid dye of the proper color to represent any desired wood, which dye is applied by means of a sponge for delineating the grain of the wood so as to appear upon the surface of the glass. The shading is softened by means of a badger brush. Photographers' varnish is then caused to flow on the glass and leaves the grain clear and fast without the necessity of using any gelatinous substance, which would render it liable to crack and spoil the effect.

To complete the operation the glass is then slightly heated, and the varied shades of dyes required for the particular wood to be represented are caused to flow over it by means of a syringe. The glass is heated in order to prevent the shadings from merging into each other. The whole is then made semitransparent by applying another coat of photographers' varnish, so as to prevent the dyes from being effaced, while the exterior surface presents the appearance of a highly polished solid wood finish. — Exchange.

A Glass Tombstone

1896

A glass tombstone; that is certainly something unique. Such a grave marker stands in but one place in the United States, and that is the cemetery overlooking the city of Kittanning, Pennsylvania. It has but recently been set up there, over the grave of Mrs. Elizabeth Pepper, of Ford City, by her son, Matthias Pepper.

Not one of the piles of marble and granite attracts so much attention as the piece of polished glass, with clear inscription, which stands on a gentle slope falling slowly from the hilltop.

Matthias Pepper, who had the glass set up, is assistant superintendent at the Ford City factory. The piece used as a grave memorial is a part of a large plate which was made of unusual thickness for the construction of circular panes to cover the portholes of ocean steamships. The practical indestructibility of glass was its quality which suggested to Mr. Pepper its use in the cemetery.

Marble and granite seem to many to be almost eternal in their hardness, but they are far from it, and not at all to be compared with glass. Wind and rain, heat and cold have their effects on stone of any kind, and finally wear away the hardest granite and cause it to crumble. Go into any old graveyard, where stones were erected more than one hundred years ago, and it will be found to be the exception where all the lettering on the monuments can be made out. The stone has crumbled and the outline has been obliterated. No such effect is produced by the weather on glass.

The Pepper monument is of plate glass one inch thick, a foot and a half wide and four feet high. It stands in a mortise cut into a cube of sandstone. The top of the glass is arched. The lettering on it is made by the "sand blast" process, and is distinct. The monument bears this inscription:

In memory of Elizabeth Pepper, of Ford City. Died February 4, 1892. Aged seventy-seven years.
Also William Pepper, husband of the above. Died ——. Aged ——.

From this inscription it may be inferred truly that William Pepper is still living.

This new use for plate glass is likely to become extended, for it has many things to recommend it. The transparency and purity of the material are suggestive and appropriate. It is easily and quickly etched, its cost is not great, and in durability it surpasses any other available material. — Pittsburg Dispatch.

If Bullets Were of Butter

1903

Curious Phenomena of Penetration of Glass By Soft Objects

Somebody — probably that indefatigable interviewer, Lord Mahon — once asked the Duke of Wellington why Souham did not press him more closely in that terrible retreat from Bourgos in 1812, during which, out of a total of about 31,000 men, he lost 7,000 by disease, straggling and desertion. "Because," he replied, "the French had learned that our bullets were not made of butter!" No doubt they were very awkward "pats," those terrible leaden spheres, weighing twelve to the pound, which Brown Bess spread with such deadly result up to her effective range of a little over 100 yards, and the lesson had been read to French conscripts upon many a bloody field. What would have been the bill of mortality had these bullets really been made of butter? An idle question, it may seem, yet one upon which I was set cogitating the other day by a singular incident.

Returning one evening to my own house. I noticed a large round hole in the plate glass window of the library, as if a football had been driven through it. There were no boys about, or the cause might have been such as saute aux veux. Upon reaching the library, I found the floor covered with shattered glass, showing that the impact had been from the outside, but nothing was visible within to account for it. The hole in the plate glass window of the library was as if a football had been driven through the window frame.

More puzzled than ever, I summoned my better half to discuss the problem. She, being of a practical turn, began looking under the furniture for the agent of destruction; while I stood idle, considering such search superfluous, mutely speculating how the deuce a plate glass window was to be replaced in a remote corner of western Scotland. For, mark ye, it was in the first days of the recent frost, and a keen north wind was blowing through the orifice. Presently my wife exclaimed: "Here it is, poor thing!" Between a large arm chair and the fireplace crouched a hen pheasant, which I caught. It showed no wound or sign of damage and straggled vigorously to get free. When it was released upon the terrace it flew a short distance, alighted, ran away strongly and was seen no more. It seems to me very remarkable that a bird should fly uninjured through plate glass as simply as a circus rider jumps through a paper hoop. One has always been told that any man of ordinary strength can drive his fist through a door panel. The only one whom I ever knew to attempt it succeeded, indeed, but at the cost of a dislocated little finger knuckle. It was explained to him that if he had aimed at a point a foot behind the panel instead of at the panel itself, his hand would have passed through without a scratch. But who is there of fortitude to put that to the test? How often has one not cause to wonder at the thickness and strength of an oaken rail through which the slender cannonbone of a horse may be driven, often without an abrasion of the skin. Reverse the process; let the horse's leg be stationary; and the oaken rail be driven against it at high velocity, and who can doubt which would be shattered?

A signal example of the imperious nature of momentum was given a few years ago, when a horse ran off with his rider in the Mall or Constitutional Hill (I forget which), charged the high iron railings in front of Buckingham palace, made a clean breach in them, and both landed unhurt within the inclosure. Force is undoubtedly one of the most intangible, inexplicable of mysteries. One is warned against the use of anthropomorphic terms in discussing it, which tend to divert the intellect from precise analysis, and we are bidden to regard it as no more than the rate per unit of length at which energy is transferred or transformed. But this carries the ordinary mind not very far, in fact, no distance at all, in apprehending what avails in the transference of energy from a soft substance to a hard one, to protect from injury such vulnerable surfaces as the skin on a horse's leg against oak or iron, or a hen pheasant's head against plate glass. — Herbert Maxwell in London Pall Mall Gazette.

We Live In the Age of Glass

1912

Compilation of a Few Facts Shows How Dependent This Generation Is on That Material.

Without glass elderly persons would be unable to read or sew, short-sighted persons would be about almost blind. Without glass we should know nothing more about the stars than was known by the ancients, nothing about the structure of matter, and we should not even suspect the existence of microbes.

Without glass we should have no photographs, no moving pictures and no illustrations in our newspapers. Without glass we could have no electric light bulbs, no X-rays, no colored windows in our churches, no thermometers or barometers.

Without glass chemists would use porcelain containers, we should drink out of metal or china mugs, we should let the light into our houses through sheets of mica.

"Glass," says the Scientific-American, "has been known from antiquity, but its common use is comparatively recent. This has been spoken of as the age of steel; it might equally be pronounced the age of glass."


Things to Think About

Minimize your own troubles. Let others do the worrying.

A hypocrite wants people to think he thinks what he doesn't think.

The less a man thinks of his neighbor the more he admires himself.


Holding His Own
"How's your son getting along in school?" "Fine. I haven't heard of any boy licking him yet."

—The Pointer, Riverdale, Illinois, January 2, 1920, page 7.