Automatic glass bottle machine

Year

1903

By

Michael J. Owens, Edward Drummond Libbey

Company

Owens Bottle Machine Co. / Owens-Illinois

Place

Toledo, Lucas County ZIP 43604 · Toledo · Lucas County

Until the early 1900s, glass bottles were mostly blown by hand. It was slow, skilled work, and the cost of every bottle included many hours of human labor. Edward Drummond Libbey ran a glassworks in Toledo and hired a gifted worker to improve it.

That man was Michael Joseph Owens, born in West Virginia in 1859, who had started a glass apprenticeship at age 10. Working for Libbey in Toledo he invented a foot-operated mold-opening device and a paste that kept glass bulbs from sticking to molds, which cut costs by 90 percent.

His biggest achievement was a machine that made bottles automatically. He formed the Owens Bottle Machine Company in 1903. The machines could make 240 bottles a minute and reduced labor costs by 80 percent. Owens and Libbey's firm became the Owens Bottle Company in 1919, and it merged with the Illinois Glass Company in 1929 to form Owens-Illinois.

Owens won the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1915 and died in Toledo on December 27, 1923.

• 1903: Owens founds the Owens Bottle Machine Company. (Toledo, OH) source
• 1915: Owens receives the Elliott Cresson Medal. source
• 1919: The firm becomes the Owens Bottle Company. (Toledo, OH) source
• 1923-12-27: Owens dies in Toledo at age 64. (Toledo, OH) source
• 1929: The company merges with Illinois Glass to form Owens-Illinois. (Toledo, OH) source

• 240 bottles a minute from one machine.
• Labor costs cut by about 80 percent.

Transformed glass production.

• Wikipedia: Michael Joseph Owens

• Wikipedia: Michael Joseph Owens