Canning and Fish Packaging Technology

Unit 14 - Glass containers and Closures

14.1.Glass containers
The early history of glass is associated with the early history of mankind. It was guessed that glass was discovered by the Phoenicians who were shipwrecked on a sandy shore when they transported cussed soda (natron) on an Arabian Desert coast. The ship caught fire on the beach and finally they got glass in bulk. The original method of making hollow glassware long before the birth of Christ was to wind the threads of glass round a core of clay or sand and after fusing wash the core away. Just before the Christian era, glass blowing by taking a gob of fused glass at the end of a metal tube to make containers was undoubtedly a revolutionary concept at that time. However, only in the 19^th century, Ashley from Yorkshire, England developed a machine to manufactures glass containers.