Charles K. Kao was named one of three winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 “for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication.”   Kao won one-half of the 2009 Prize for his discovery of how to transmit light signals over long distances through glass fibers as thin as a human hair.  His 1966 breakthrough led to the creation of modern fiber-optic communication networks that carry voice, video and high-speed Internet data around the world.

As detailed in the Nobel Committee scientific information, “An intense search for suitable transmission media in the optical domain began at the beginning of the 1960s. The optical fiber was, however, mostly set aside because of its high attenuation…The attenuation of the first optical fibers was  typically 1000 dB/km, implying that only 1% of light got transmitted in twenty meters of fiber.”

“…Charles K. Kao was a young engineer at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories (ITT) working on optical communication.   He started under the direction of Karbowiak, and then became in charge of a small group…They investigated in detail the fundamental properties of optical fibers with respect to optical communication.  In particular, they did not consider the physics of waveguides only…but also the material properties.  Their conclusions were presented by Kao in London in the beginning of 1966…”

“The most important result was that losses in dielectric media were mostly caused by absorption and scattering. The predicted attenuation of a few dB/km was found to be much less than that measured at the time.  Consequently, the latter was predominantly caused by impurities, in particular iron ions. Fibers with glass of higher purity could be a good candidate for optical communication.  Damping caused by bending and waveguide imperfections, as well as  propagation and radiation losses were also analyzed and found to be small.  Single mode fibers were presented as the best transmission medium for optical communication.”

“What the wheel did for transport, the optical fiber did for telecommunications,” said Richard Epworth, who worked with Kao at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in Harlow, England in the 1960s.  “Optical fiber enables you to transmit information with little energy over long distances and to transmit information at very high rates.”

Kao was awarded the 1999 Charles Stark Draper Prize by the National Academy of Engineering (U.S.) along with Robert D. Maurer (Corning Glass)  and John B. MacChesney (Bell Laboratories) who did subsequent work in fiber optic technology.

A recent article in the New York Times had pictures of the new glass boxes suspended over the street at the Sears Building observation tower in Chicago.    The article quotes two glass scientists,  Carlo G. Pantano at Pennsylvania State University and Harrie J. Stevens, director of the Center for Glass Research at Alfred University in a discussion of glass tensile strength.    (The article also includes a bit about how the glass for laptops is manufactured.)

The RoyMech site has information about measuring glass strength, and links to other sites about glass material properties.

Most applications of glass in buildings use laminated glass or tempered glass.

We get many requests for information about glass from school students, and have a number of links to information sources about glass on our website: Places to Learn More About Glass.  We find that many of the visitors to our website head to this area first.   One link there is to an article from a shower door manufacturer, which discusses the U.S. standards for tempered glass. There are also several videos of glass manufacturing and the machinery involved.

In our “Learn About Glass” section we collect interesting articles which we have found about glass on the Internet. Do you have a link to recommend? Post your link below.

The Glass Art Society met in Corning, N.Y. June 10-13, for its 39th Conference.

In the afternoon on Opening Day we heard three inspirational presentations.

The first two presentations each mentioned Harvey Littleton and Dominic Labino, who are considered the founding fathers of the studio glass movement. It was in the 1960s that artists began to explore the possibility of creating works in glass, and today, glass art and glass artists receive the greatest public attention and media coverage of any area of glass production.

John Leighton, who received the 2009 Honorary Lifetime Membership Award, talked about his life working in glass, a presentation called “Thoughts of Another Object Maker.” He has maintained a studio since 1972, and was head of the glass program at San Francisco State University for 24 years, and then head of the glass program at California State University, Fullerton. He has been a guest instructor at numerous schools including C.C.A.C., the Pilchuck School, and the Tokyo Glass Art Institute in Japan. His presentation wove the history of the studio glass movement into an account of the students and artists he has worked with in the past 40 years.

Marvin Lipofsky, who received the 2009 GAS Lifetime Achievement Award, used the theme “Thank You Harvey… It’s Been 47 Great Years” to discuss his introduction to glass through Harvey Littleton and the work he has made all over the world, creating glass sculptural series in nearly 70 factories and glass studios. He began to teach at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCA) in 1968, and has also been a teacher in many workshops, summer programs, and conferences.

The last presentation in the Opening Ceremony was by Tim McFarlane, of Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners, who talked about the engineering involved in glass architectural projects around the world. The company designed the glass staircases for Apple stores, the glass Alpine House in Kew Gardens, U.K., and the structural glazing for the Corning Museum of Glass, where many of the Glass Art Conference programs were held, as well as many other glass structures as part of buildings around the world. He concluded his talk by showing models and some pictures of a restoration project in Menokin, Va. which uses glass to replace the missing pieces of a building.

I am not a glass artist, so you will not see me in the picture of 1000 Gaffers (gaffer – a traditional name for glassblowers) that was taken in the “Gaffer District,” the name given to Corning’s historical downtown on Thursday night, but I did enjoy the glass art exhibits at Corning Museum, and being around so many people who love glass objects.

The 40th Glass Art Society Annual Conference will be held in Louisville, Kentucky, June 10-12, 2010.

The 2009 Glass Factory Directory print and electronic editions are now available. See the order form at:
http://www.glassfactorydir.com/OrderForm.html for details.

Good news this week is that Cameron Family Glass Packaging of Kalama, Wash. has shipped its first glass wine bottles! Congratulations to the Cameron Family and the employees, many of whom have come to Cameron from other glass bottle manufacturing facilities!

A recent post on LinkedIn asked for help in finding a supplier to provide custom glass parts. Glass Technology Services in Sheffield, U.K., was recommended. We often recommend that companies contact the American Scientific Glass Association; there is a link to this trade group and other glass-related organizations on our website at: http://www.glassfactorydir.com/Org.html.

In a recent article, the Long Island Business Press stated that the Studebaker Company, which made automobiles until March, 1966, was started by a family named Graham, which they said “started out as bottle makers in Indiana, where they pioneered the technique of upside-down manufacturing, which allowed the molten glass to form a thick lip, making it strong enough to hold a cap instead of a cork.” I have never heard this before – and there are things I do not know about glass history – can anyone tell me more about whether or not this note on the history of the glass industry is correct?

There was a family emergency and I did not make it to the Glass Problems Conference in Columbus in early November. If you were there, write and tell me what you found most useful about the presentations or the people you talked to.

The 69th Glass Problems Conference in Columbus, Ohio, is just two weeks away. The sessions will focus on melting and furnace modeling, glass furnace refractories, and energy-saving for glass furnaces. Each year glass plant managers and staff, suppliers to the glass industry, glass manufacturing specialists from around the world and students and professors from several schools with glass engineering programs attend this conference coordinated by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Ohio State University. There is still time to register to attend the meetings, click the link above.

If you are attending the Glass Problems Conference, look for the lady with “Scott on Glass” on her nametag and give her your tip for an upcoming blog entry!
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Door and Window Magazine has the story “First-Hand Observations from a Glass Plant” on their blog, a great description of a visit to a PPG float glass plant in Carlisle, Pa.
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Another website has pictures from inside an Anchor Glass container plant in Antioch, Calif. that has been closed for several years.
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The New York Times recently showed a decorative piece by a student at Yale School of Architecture, which used recycled light bulbs as candleholders. Her light bulb candle holder came out of an assignment to make a centerpiece with recycled materials.
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At the end of October Owens-Illinois will close its glass container plant in Lavington, B.C., Canada. The production will be moved to other Owens-Illinois facilities.
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The Technology pages of the New York Times recently noted the announcement of the U.S. Department of Energy L Prize “to spur lighting manufacturers to develop high-quality, high-efficiency solid-state lighting products to replace the common light bulb.” The prize, which was announced last May, is for a viable solid-state LED replacement for the standard 60-watt incandescent bulb.

Recently the Wall Street Journal had an article on Crystal City, Mo., where PPG Industries had a flat glass plant they billed as the world’s largest until they closed it in 1990.  Like the glass plants built in so many towns and cities in the 20th century, this glass plant was in the center of the town. The article reports that the plant site was bulldozed after the glass plant was closed, and the site has remained empty.   Many towns which used to have glass plants in the center of town still have the empty factory buildings standing.  When the plant closed, hundreds of people in the Crystal City area lost their jobs at the plant, and many others lost related jobs as well.

In 1977 there were 175,100 U.S. glass industry employees, including those at bottle plants, flat glass plants, fiber glass plants and smaller decorative and household glass manufacturers, according to the Annual Survey of Manufactures. In 1987 the Survey reported a total of 153,200 glass industry employees (a 12.5% drop).  By 1997 glass industry employment had dropped again, to 128,876 (15.87%), and for 2006, the latest year for which the Annual Survey has released numbers, glass industry employment was reported at 100,919 (down 21.7%).  While we were watching, glass industry employment has decreased 42.3% in the past 30 years.

Some of these employees worked for plants that had closed because more beverages were packaged in plastic bottles, and some closed because glass manufacturers outside the U.S. were making glass products that they could sell in the U.S. for less than the prices charged by U.S. manufacturers. In the current economic climate, the cost of energy is making it more difficult to make and sell glass in the United States.

As we mentioned in a previous post, General Electric is just one of the glass manufacturing companies which has announced that they will be closing glass plants this year.

YouTube has several videos of glass machinery in action, including one made at the Clarion, Pa. Owens-Illinois plant where glass bottles are made. It is very difficult for most people to actually take a tour of a working glass plant, but these videos help those who can never get inside a plant see what an amazingly beautiful process glassmaking is.

I walked through a craft store recently, and noticed how few things that looked like glass really were glass. They had plastic tumblers in a design made classic by the glass manufacturers who developed it. They had plastic picture frames and business card holders with “Glasstique” in the brand name. Things made of glass are beautiful, they are valued, but these days many things that look like glass are not glass. In the entire store I found two glass items that were really made of glass — glass beads for decoration and glass buttons made by glass artists.

When I meet people for the first time and they hear that I do something that is about glass, they always have wonderful glass-related stories to tell. They talk about a glass dish that their grandmother had, or beautiful goblets they used in a restaurant. Many have seen some of the documentaries shown on television about how glass is made and artistic glass. Glass is a material that we see as beautiful.

When Arizona tea first introduced tea in blue, green and white bottles, I saw the empty bottles used in so many offices as vases, pencil holders and decorative items. Today many of these bottles use decorative appliques to get the effect of colored glass with clear glass.

I am told that beer packaged in non-glass containers tastes differently than the same beer in glass bottles. There are bottle plants owned by beer manufacturers and wine makers now, a testament to the value of glass as a packaging material. Fruit sold in glass jars and tomato sauces of many flavors in glass jars have a higher perceived value than the same products in non-glass containers.

A friend recently brought me a Bawls Guarana bottle, which has a pattern of “bumps” on the bottle (the company says the bumps keep the bottle from slipping out of your hand). The Bawls bottles are blue, brown and white. Once again an innovative company has found a way to make a special impression with glass containers!

Last October General Electric announced its intention to restructure its lighting division, expecting to close plants, mainly incandescent bulb plants, in the U.S., Brazil and Mexico.  On July 10 GE announced it was considering spinning off the entire Consumer & Industrial business, which includes GE Lighting, as a new company in 2009.

The June, 2008 issue of the American Ceramic Society Bulletin noted that the Asahi Glass Company has announced that it will cease operations at three float glass lines and two architectural coating lines in North America by December, 2008, and has sold its glass fabrication lines. Asahi says that there is an oversupply situation in the market for clear float glass, with little difference in the product available from any manufacturer. They will be concentrating resources on glass for solar cells, glass for automotive uses and value-added building products.

In March the Associated Press news service reported that Corning Inc. planned to sell or shut down Steuben Glass, stating that Steuben has lost money for the last 10 years. Closing Steuben would mean the loss of another of the “hand glass” businesses that used to produce most of the household and decorative glass used in the U.S.

A bit of good news for glass manufacturing: The June issue of the American Ceramic Society Bulletin notes that Pilkington North America, owned by Nippon Sheet Glass, is considering upgrading its Lathrop, Calif. float glass plant with a new energy-efficient furnace and equipment and improved pollution controls. Building a new furnace in California, which has some of the strongest air pollution control standards in the U.S., would be quite an achievement after many years of refurbishing and repairing glass furnaces so as not to trigger U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations. The possibility of building one more new glass furnace in the U.S. is a small hopeful sign in the current glass manufacturing universe.

A few weeks ago we learned that the West Virginia Museum of American Glass was moving into a new home in Weston, W.Va. Weston was the home of West Virginia Specialty Glass and Louie Glass (which made Princess House) when I visited on a glass plant trip in the 1980s. Both of these plants are now closed. The Museum has an interesting glass collection, and has held Glass History conferences in the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia area for more than ten years.

Many of the “hand” plants that made ashtrays, dishes, platters and many other kinds of decorative glass flourished in the Ohio River Valley area before economic conditions hit the industry.

Those who like to remember the history of glass in the United States have many places to go to see the things that were made in the era of skilled glassblowers and decorators.

The Wheaton Museum of American Glass has a glass shop where I made my first (and last) piece of hot glass many years ago on another glass plant trip. I will never forget how heavy the blowpipe was!

Glass museums in the eastern half of the United States tend to focus on the products of the commercial glass operations that used to be in each area. The Heinz Center has a complete set of our Glass Factory Directories through 1990, and a great collection of Pittsburgh glass. The Corning Museum of Glass has an extensive collection of American glass from American factories and glass made by glass artists.

If you live in the eastern half of the United States, there is likely a glass museum not far from you, an interesting place to visit whether you collect glass or just admire it.

Let me know what glass museums you have visited!