Where and when glass production began is uncertain. It is thought by some that the first glass was probably developed in the Mitannian or Hurrian region of Mesopotamia, possibly as an extension of the production of glazes (5000 BCE). Glass objects dated back to 2500 BCE have been found in Syria, and by 2450 BCE, glass beads were plentiful in Mesopotamia. Glass came later in Egypt, with its manufacture appearing as a major industry around 1500 BCE. The oldest glass of undisputed date found in Egypt dates from 2200 BCE.
In the beginning it was very hard and slow to manufacture glass. Glass melting furnaces were small and the heat they produced was hardly enough to melt glass. But in the 1st century BC, Syrian craftsmen invented the blow pipe. This revolutionary discovery made glass production easier, faster and cheaper. Glass production flourished in the Roman Empire and spread from Italy to all countries under its rule. In 1000 AD the Egyptian city of Alexandria was the most important center of glass manufacture. Throughout Europe the miraculous art of making stained glass on churches and cathedrals across the continent reached its height in the finest Chatres and Conterbury cathedral windows produced in the 13th and 14th centuries.
By 1575, English glassmakers were made glass in Venetian fashion. In 1674, an English glassmaker George Ravenscroft invented lead glass.
The first glass factory in the United States was built in Jamestown, Virginia in 1608.
In the early 1800’s, there was a great demand for window glass which was called crown glass. In the 1820s, the age of blowing individual bottles, glasses and flasks was ended by the invention of a hand-operated machine. In the 1870s, the first semi-automatic bottle machine was introduced.
After 1890, glass use, development and manufacture began to increase rapidly. Machinery has been developed for precise, continuous manufacture of a host of products. In 1902, Irving W. Colburn invented the sheet glass drawing machine which made possible the mass production of window glass. In 1904, the American engineer Michael Owens patented automatic bottle blowing machine.
In 1959 new revolutionary float glass production was introduced by Sir Alastair Pilkington by which 90% of flat glass is still manufactured today.
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