The centenary of the first automatic bottle-making machine

The Owens machine, the world's first automatic bottle-making machine, was conceived, by Michael Joseph Owens, himself a skilled blower, when he was factory superintendent for E.D. Libbey in Toledo, Ohio, in 1898. Semi-automatic machines, notably that of Ashley and Arnall, had been in use for a decade but they all relied on several workers, including a skilled gatherer to feed them with gobs. The crucial advance made by Owens was to devise a machine that gathered its own glass by suction from a pool of molten glass. The generous support of Libbey enabled Owens and a small team of colleagues within a few years to develop a practical and well engineered machine which was first offered to glass manufacturers in 1904. The development of the machine is here followed largely from the series of patents obtained by Owens and his colleagues.