Technology and Text: Glass Consciousness and Nineteenth-century Culture

Abstract

Abstract A Piece of common nineteenth-century window glass, held up to the light, is likely to display small blemishes-the blisters of air bubbles, and spectral undulations, almost invisible striae which slightly distort the vision. Such material, cylinder glass, or sheet glass as it was often termed, is different from the float glass produced in the computer-controlled factories of today. It was the commonest form of mid nineteenth-century glass, superseding the crown glass manufactured earlier, and preceding plate glass. Plate was in general use in the later part of the century even though, like crown, it was being made in the 1840s. The production of both overlapped with that of sheet. But sheet was dominant. It was blown by the human breath as massive four to six feet cylinders before being cut and flattened to produce pieces of glass up to twenty feet square.1 In seven- to ten-hour sessions or ‘journeys’ before the furnace, a team could produce up to eight hundred feet of sixteen-ounce glass (the weight for common use).