Toughened Glass Making in Brooklyn

Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Toughened Glass Making in Brooklyn.

Toughened Glass Making in Brooklyn.

A World reporter has lately visited the works in Brooklyn where the manufacture of the La Bastie toughened glass is now in active progress. The manufacturer states that, in June last, his factory was destroyed by fire, and the introduction of the glass into our markets has for that reason been delayed. Only one kind of goods, lamp chimneys, are now made, and the process is as follows: A workman, having in his hand a pole about eight feet long, with a knob on the end of the size of a lamp burner, fits a chimney on the knob and plunges it into the flame of a furnace. He with-draws it twice or thrice that it may not heat too quickly, turning the pole rapidly the while, and when the glass reaches a red heat quickly shoots it into one of a dozen small baths fixed on a revolving table, and seizes another chimney. A boy keeps the revolving table always in position, and as the chimneys come around to him, having been the proper time in the bath, he takes them out to be dried, sorted, cleaned, and packed. The bath has to be of just the right temperature, as, if it be too hot or too cold, the chimneys are liable to explode. In either case the process of annealing is imperfect. By working the tables at a certain rate, the baths are kept at the right temperature by the immersion of the red hot glass. Oil or tallow is used in the bath. Any greasy substance will do, though tallow has proved most satisfactory.

M. De la Chapelle, the manufacturer, states that he has already sold $150,000 worth of the chimneys. The toughened chimneys are about 60 per cent dearer than those of ordinary glass. The factory is in Delavan street, Brooklyn, N.Y.

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This book is part of the public domain. Various (2006). Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19406/pg19406-images.html

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