Irving Colburn machine

Irving Colburn was an American inventor who developed a process for creating continuous sheets of flat glass. His machine, inspired by papermaking technology, drew glass vertically from a molten surface. After rising a short distance, the glass was bent horizontally over a roller and then moved into an annealing lehr. This method, perfected by the Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass Company, was a significant advancement in flat glass manufacturing, though it initially produced glass with undulations that required grinding and polishing for optical clarity.12