Mechanical glass production from 1900 replaced hand glassblowing with machines that drew and rolled flat glass in large formats. At the start of the 20th century, industrialisation ended the small, handmade panes. Machines now delivered larger, flatter and more uniform sheets.
Application
The key breakthrough was the drawing process. The Belgian engineer Émile Fourcault developed a method around 1904 in which a ribbon of glass was drawn vertically upwards out of the melt and solidified into window glass as it rose. Shortly afterwards came the Libbey-Owens process, in which the drawn glass ribbon was guided horizontally over a roller. Both produced machine-drawn window glass in continuous ribbons.
For wired and figured glass, the rolling process was used: molten glass was rolled out between rollers into a sheet. In wired glass, a metal mesh was embedded in the glass during rolling. This method also made patterned glass (figured glass) possible.
Characteristics
The benefits were considerable. Formats became much larger, allowing bigger panes in a single piece. Flatness and uniform thickness improved greatly, although drawn glass still showed slight optical distortion. Only with the later float glass process (1950s-60s) did that distortion virtually disappear.
Related terms
- glass
- building glass
- double glazing
- wired glass
Learn more about building terms in our knowledge base at fredsdiyplans.com.