Tag: bottle

Wikipedia says: A glass bottle is a bottle made from glass. Glass bottles can vary in size considerably, but are most commonly found in sizes ranging between about 200 millilitres and 1.5 litres.

Glass bottles and glass jars are found in many households around the world. The first glass bottles were produced in southeast Asia around 100 B.C. and in the Roman Empire around 1 AD. America’s glass bottle and glass jar industry was born in the early 1600s, when settlers in Jamestown built the first glass-melting furnace.

The earliest bottles or vessels were made by ancient man. Ingredients were melted to make glass and then clay forms were dipped into the molten liquid. When the glass cooled off, the clay was chipped out of the inside leaving just the hollow glass vessel. This glass was very thin as the fire was not as hot as modern day furnaces. The blowpipe was invented around 1 B.C. This allowed molten glass to be gathered on the end of the blow pipe and blown into the other end to create a hollow vessel. Eventually, the use of a mold was introduced.

Once made, bottles may suffer from internal stresses as a result of unequal, or too rapid cooling. An annealing oven, or ‘lehr’, is used to cool glass containers slowly to prevent stress and make the bottle stronger. When a glass bottle filled with liquid is dropped or subjected to shock, the water hammer effect may cause hydrodynamic stress, breaking the bottle.