Irving Wightman Colburn (16 May 1861 – 4 September 1917) was an American

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and

manufacturer Manufacturing is the creation or Production (economics), production of goods with the help of equipment, Work (human activity), labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary se ...

. In 1898, Colburn applied for a patent for a "Glass Working Machine" that could make hollow-bodied glass containers like bottles. The patent was granted on March 7, 1899, Patent Number US620,642. The use of the patent is unknown. Colburn developed a process for the production of continuous flat

glass Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window pane ...

disks which made the mass production for

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent ma ...

panes possible. Colburn began his experiments in 1899. In one

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

for a machine to produce flat glass on 25 March 1902. He created the Colburn Machine Glass Co. in August 1906. In 1908 he installed two machines, before the technology had developed, and in 1911 he became bankrupt. Toledo Glass Company bought Colburn's patents in 1912. He then improved the process with Toledo Glass, and its first successful result occurred on 25 November 1913. The company then became the Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass company in 1916.

References

1861 births 1917 deaths American manufacturing businesspeople 20th-century American inventors Glass makers 19th-century American businesspeople {{US-inventor-stub