AN IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART OR METHOD OF MAKING, SPREADING, OR FLATTENING SHEET GLASS, COMMONLY CALLED GERMAN SHEET GLASS, PLATE GLASS, OR ANY OTHER SPREAD GLASS REQUIRING A POLISHED SURFACE
Year: 1805

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, JOHN ROBERT
LUCAS, of Charlton House, in the County of Somerset, Esquire, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third, by His
Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Twenty-third day of January,
in the forty-fifth year of His reign, did give and grant unto me, the said
John Robert Lucas, my executors, administrators, and assigns, His special
licence, full power, sole priviledge and authority, that 1, the said John
Robert Lucas, my executors, administrators, and assigns, during the term of
years therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and
vend, within England, Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Inven-
tion of "AN IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART OR METHOD OF MAKING, SPREADING,
OR FLATTENING SHEET GLASS, COMMONLY CALLED GERMAN SHEET GLASS, PLATE
GLASS, OR ANY OTHER SPREAD GLASS REQUIRING A POLISHED SURFACE;" in which
said Letters Patent there is contained a proviso obliging me, the said John
Robert Lucas, under my hand and seal, to cause a particular description
of the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be
performed, to be enrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery within
four calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said in part
recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same, relation being thereunto had)
may more fully and at large appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso in the said
Letters Patent contained, I, the said John Robert Lucas, do hereby
declare that my said Invention of an Improvement in the Art or Method
of Making, Spreading, or Flattening Sheet Glass, commonly called German
Sheet Glass, Plate Glass, or any other Spread Glass requiring a polished
Surface, is fully ascertained and described in manner and form as follows;
that is to say
Instead of the usual method of spreading the glass upon a fixed flat floor
or stone in the spreading kiln or other place where the glass is spread, I spread
it upon something having a smooth or polished surface that is moveable
or portable, which may be made either of metal, stone, marble, porcelaine,
clay, or other composition, or other material or materials fit for the purpose;
the plate of metal, slab of stone or marble, or whatever composition or
material or materials it is intended to spread the glass upon, is put
into the spreading kiln, or into any other place that can be heated suffi-
ciently for the purpose of spreading the glass. The glass is then put
upon the moveable plate of metal, slab of stone or marble, or whatever
other thing it may be intended to spread the glass on, and accordingly spread or
flattened as in the usual method. After the piece of glass is spread or flattened,
the plate of metal, slab of stone or marble, or whatever other thing the glass
may have been spread upon, together with the glass upon it, are removed
either into a cooler part of the spreading kiln, or into an annealing kiln,
or into the open air, or into some place that is cooler than the kiln or
place in which the glass may have been spread, where they should remain until
the glass be sufficiently cooled to permit the workmen to take it off to pile it.
The operation is then compleated, and the glass may be taken off the metal
plate, slab of stone or marble, or whatever other thing it may have been spread
upon, and piled in the annealing kiln in the usual manner.-N.B. The metal
plate, or whatever the glass is spread upon, should have handles fixt to it, or
somthing that a hook can lay hold of; and to make it come out of the spread-
ing kilu more easy it should be placed upon rollers or castors, by which means
it can be easily be pulled out of the spreading kiln by a man having two
hooks fixed into two long handles; after which, and as soon as the glass is
cool enough, it may be taken off the plate, carried to the annealing kiln,
and piled. This is the method I use, but I am aware there may be many other
methods contrived for taking the plate (or whatever the glass was spread upon)
out of the spreading kiln, which will be obvious to every workman, and there-
fore unnecessary to mention, as the novelty and utility of my Invention