Los Angeles herald., 1909-11-13
Bottles and Their Making
Bv Frederic j. Haskin

- T has been said that civilization
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III is founded upon class, and II
lW NHl ought to be suggested 10 the
I@ k makers of aphorisms that mod
II& NsI ern civilization is contained III
6ss bottles. Bottles made of goat
skins are still in use in many
parts of the world, bottles of eartnen-
ware are used still more widely, Dut
bottles of glass measure the content
of our civilization. Including jars ana
other wide-mouthed glass containers,
the total output of the glass Dottle
factories of the United States amounts
to a billion and half bottles year
nearly twenty bottles for each man,
woman and child in the republic. Bot
ties are used in scores Of ways. They
contain mans fruit preserves ana
iellies. his mineral waters. and his
beers, his whiskies and his wines, his
medicines and his liniments. They are
Indispensable.
The earliest form of the use of glass
was in botte-malxing. The monuments
of Egypt preserve pictures OF glass
blowers at work in the days before the
pyramids were built And 1t is a re-
markable fact that there was little
progress in the art of bottle-maklng
from that early day until a few years
lutionized the business. 1t is far cry
from the ancient glass-blower to the
modern bottle-making machine that
turns out perfect bottles at the rate or
ten a minute. The finished bottle made
by machine is better than the one blown
by hand The bottle-users prefer II 10
the hand-blown product, declaring II
to be more uniform in its thickness
stronger, and more exact in its con-
tents.
The bottle-making-mac was born
of necessity. A French glass manu-
facturer was larassed by labor troubles
in one way or another until at last ne
shut down his plant. Then he set TO
work trying to devise machine that
would take the. place OF men IN plow-
ing bottles. 1t was not many months
before machines were installed, and
his work started again. This was the
forerunner of the American machlne
that is so nearly human that 1t can DO
its work better then men, ana can
make bottles for forty cents huhqred
which cost seventy cents under the
hand method. The making of bottles
was long believed to be the one branch
of glass-making that hand laborers
could depand upon as being free fropl
machine competition. The INTRODUCTION
of the bottle-making machinery eN-
ploded that theory, and when the
manufacturer recites the advantages
of the machine-made bottle over .ne
handmade, and adds that the number
of bottles broken among handmade
ones was thirty per thousand, as COM
pared with three per thousand, ma
chine-made, he clinches his argument
against the older method.
One of the boons of the new methoo
is the fact that pulmonary diseases
which were very frequent among pot-
tie blowers, have been almost entirely
overcome by the new method. Passlhg
the blowing tube from lip TO lip spread
contagion and the high death rale
among glass blowers was attributed
more to this than any other cause. In
the machines compressed air does the
work that was hitherto required or hu-
man lungs, and the sick and death
rates have both fallen off since the IN
PRODUCTION of the machines. More than
twenty-five factories are now turning
out machine-made bottles.
The eploitation of bottle making ma
chinery is an apt illustration OF now
one new mechanical device may alu
another. A complete bottle making ma
chine weighs about sixteen tons. OF
course the drummer cannot put one
OF them in a suit case and lug 1t
around. So he has enlisted the aid OF
the moving picture machine and has
a string of film showing the whole
process from the assembling and set
ting up of the machine TO the COM
pletion of the finished bottles. With
This film in his grip he is able to go
to any town in the country where
there is a moving picture apparatus
and demonstrate the wonders of glass
blowing by machinery.
There are a great many styles of
bottles, new fashions being brought
out each year. Last year fifty-seven
new styles were placed on the mar
lot 10 the bottle manufacturer there