page_title: John Pitcairn Jr.
section_title: Glass
hierarchical_section_title: John Pitcairn Jr. / Career / Glass
caption_attribution_description: PPG Place in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
context_page_description: John Pitcairn Jr. was a Scottish-born American industrialist. With just an elementary school education, Pitcairn rose through the ranks of the Pennsylvania railroad industry, and played a significant role in the creation of the modern oil and natural gas industries. He went on to found the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, an early industry innovator which quickly grew into the largest manufacturer of plate glass in the United States, and amassed one of the largest fortunes in the United States at the time.
  Pitcairn was also the primary financial benefactor of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, a Christian church which follows the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and was a major activist in the American anti-vaccination movement.
context_section_description: In 1883, Pitcairn teamed up with Captain John Baptiste Ford and several others to establish the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (PPG). Based in Creighton, Pennsylvania (about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh along the Allegheny River), PPG soon became the United States' first commercially successful producer of high-quality, thick flat glass using the plate process. PPG was also the world's first plate glass plant to power its furnaces with locally produced natural gas, an innovation which rapidly stimulated widespread industrial use of the cleaner-burning fuel.
  PPG expanded quickly. By 1900, known as the "Glass Trust", it included ten plants, had a 65 percent share of the U.S. plate glass market, and had become the nation's second largest producer of paint. Today, known as PPG Industries, the company is a multibillion-dollar, Fortune 500 corporation with 150 manufacturing locations around the world. It now produces coatings, glass, fiberglass, and chemicals.
  Pitcairn served as a director of PPG from its start, its president from 1897 to 1905, and  chairman of the board from 1894 until his death.
caption: Headquarters of PPG Industries, formerly Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company
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