Glassmakers of ancient Venice maintained world superiority quite simply: craftsmen caught spiriting trade secrets out of Venice were made galley slaves or killed by hired assassins. In the modern world of sheet glass, Britain’s Pilkington Brothers, Ltd., maintains a comparable superiority in a more humane way: the company consistently outdoes rivals in research and development.
Pilkington, sole survivor of the 24 glassworks that thrived in Britain in the 19th century and then died because of competition, made its first major contribution to the industry in 1935 by developing a grinder that smoothed both sides of the glass simultaneously — until recently the common method for finishing flat glass. But grinding scoured off 20% of the finished glass, and something better was needed. In 1959, after seven years and $20 million worth of research, Pilkington announced a float process for making sheet and plate glass that revolutionized the industry. In it, glass forms while floating on a surface of molten tin, and there is no need to polish it afterward. Float glass, moreover, has less distortion than glass made by earlier processes.
Last week Pilkington informed customers of another advance: it can now make tinted glass by the same float process with considerable savings in time and capital expense. Up to now, when glassmakers wanted to produce tints—even with a float process—they either had to shut down and convert regular lines or else build an additional plant. Under the new method, which cost $2.8 million to research and perfect, machines bombard the molten glass with microscopic metallic particles as it passes across the tin bath. With an investment of only $36,000, glassmakers can add the tinting process to a regular plant, color as much as desired bt the continuous ribbon of glass. Says Sir Harry Pilkington, 62, chairman of the 141-year-old family-owned company: “We already knew that our float process leads the world in the manufacture of this type of glass. As a result of our new discovery, we hope demand will increase enormously.”
Pilkington’s original float process-developed by Chief Researcher Alastair Pilkington, Sir Harry’s cousin—was so successful that glass companies in eleven nations rushed to obtain licenses for it, including the Soviet Union and such U.S. glassmakers as Libbey-Owens-Ford, Pittsburgh Plate Glass and the Ford Motor Co. Eventually, Pilkington expects to earn about $240 million annually from the float process in license fees, royalties and exports: the new tint process will add another $24 million a year to that. Meanwhile controlling 85% of British glassmaking and exporting its own products to 100 nations around the world, Pilkington foresees a future as shiny as a piece of newly hardened plate.
The company had revenues of $240 million last year from royalties and sales of flat glass, cathode-ray screens, television tubes, high-voltage insulators, fluorescent tubes, glass building blocks, and 60 million pieces of eyeglass for spectacles wearers. Pilkington fiber glass is being used as insulation aboard the new liner Queen Elizabeth II as well as in the ship’s lifeboats and deck chairs, and Pilkington optical glass will be used in the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic jet (see above story). About the only smear on the glass for Pilkington is the uncertain result of a three-year investigation by Britain’s Monopolies Commission into its near monopoly of the glassmaking industry. “I have no idea of its contents,” says Sir Harry Pilkington of the upcoming commission report. “Some hares have been chased, and the questions have been wide ranging, but there has been no hint in them of the way things will go.” In a nation that has been badly hampered by trailing technology, however, many feel that the company and its advanced processes ought to be polished up rather than shattered.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- 11 New Books to Read in February
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Cecily Strong on Goober the Clown
- Column: The Rise of America’s Broligarchy
- Introducing the 2025 Closers
Contact us at letters@time.com