592 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Siemens Tank Fubnace. Longitudinal section. 



machine, quite complete, which had successfully been subjected to 

 an internal pressure of three hundred pounds to the square inch. 

 The career of the machine in England, we believe, has been most 



unfortunate, but this 

 does not at all diminish 

 the interest which its in- 

 troduction into America 

 has excited. The advan- 

 tages to be gained by the 

 use of such a machine 

 are much too solid to 

 permit small obstacles to 

 hinder its success. The 

 trial run at Woodbury 

 has been fairly successful. The automatic principle has not been 

 developed to the full extent in these machines, but it has been 

 carried so far that one man and three boys — none of them neces- 

 sarily skilled glass-blowers — can operate two machines, each of 

 which is capable of turning out two bottles a minute. The ma- 

 chine does not gather the glass. One of the boys, the " gatherer," 

 is specially detailed for that service. He feeds the molten " metal " 

 to the machine, in which it is mechanically molded, the neck 

 and mouth formed, the interior blown by means of compressed 

 air, and the finished bottle automatically delivered to a carrier 

 which takes it to the annealing oven. There is undoubted room 

 for improvement both in the performance and capacity of the ma- 

 chines. But the important step has been taken, and bottles have 

 really been made in this country by machinery. One need not be 

 very sanguine to believe that the initial step will lead to others, 

 and that in the fu- 

 ture not only bottles, 

 but all other forms of 

 blown ware, will be 

 made mechanically. 

 This is indeed only 

 in the line of indus- 

 trial development 

 which is everywhere 

 substituting contin- 

 uous automatic pro- 

 cesses for those which are discontinuous and organic. An expe- 

 rienced glass manufacturer, who has been for many years identi- 

 fied with the development of the industry in New Jersey, thus 

 sums up present realities and tendencies : " The use of petroleum, 

 the introduction of the tank furnace, and the bottle-making ma- 

 chine are the three great and only improvements that have been 



Siemens Tank Furnace. Transverse section. 



