 It is widely recognized that in advanced technology is one of the most distinctive aspects of American society. The Historic American Engineering Record, a program of the National Park Service, documents historic engineering and industrial works throughout the country. Measure drawings, photographs, and historical reports are preserved in the Library of Congress for sites and structures which illustrate America's technological development. Documentary films of surviving industrial processes provide still another means of increasing our understanding, since they preserve the critical relationship between machines and those who use them. This film is part of the engineering records program for the formation of a visual archive of American technological history. The Seneca Glass Company was founded in 1891, actually a group of German immigrants living in the Cumberland, Maryland area formed a company. So they had to have a glass factory, a glass house, and there was a vacant one in Seneca County, Ohio. So with the West Virginia Charter in 1891, the Seneca Glass Company started in Seneca County, Ohio. In 1896, the natural gas was discovered in the Morgantown area, and so the Seneca Glass Company moved this present location in Morgantown in 1896. We were at one time, of course, quite a bit larger than we are today. We had 20-some shops working, whereas today we have 11. We had 60-some cutters, whereas today we have about 12. Of course, back in the turn of the century, in 1910 and 15, there were no machines to make glassware. Any glass you drank out of was handmade somewhere. Basic raw materials in our batch are silica sand, soda ash, pot ash, red lead, miter, and a host of small chemicals for coloring and for what have you. We prepare approximately 2,000 pounds of batch for each pot. In mixing the batch, we, of course, weigh out into a batch cart to 200 pounds of this or 50 pounds of that, and we have all the raw materials weigh out into a batch cart. We then use an overhead vacuum where we suck up all the batch into this holding tank. When this is done, we reverse the process, putting the hose into our mixer, and then release all the raw materials as our mixer is moving so that all the raw materials are thoroughly mixed and broken up and going through the mixer. Of course, at this point, then, the mixer is sealed, and there's so many turns on so many different batches, and it's thoroughly mixed, and then upended into that same batch cart to be wheeled out and put into the front. We have a different formula for every batch we make. Even the collards are different. Like, you might think you could take a crystal batch and put any color into it, but there's any substance that goes into this batch has to do with the color. It turns out in the nature of the glass, how it works, how it gathers, how it behaves even when you temper it. When we threw the layer, we had a yellow that we had to keep changing the batch because the temper wasn't right on it. When you go to temper it, it would explode. It cracked. Anything you put in it, it's all important. The color is added to the batch actually for two reasons. One reason being that we can re-melt the glass and again use it. But secondly, it acts as a catalyst in the melting process. After we work a pot out, at the end of the day, we finish them then if they're going to fill the pot in for two days later working, we'll leave a four to five inch heel of glass. There's seven or eight inches of glass left. They'll lay it out down to the four inch level. The glass that's laid out of the pot is either dumped or sold to a marble manufacturer. We have a marble manufacturer in West Virginia which buys X amount of tons a month from us of any color to make marbles. It doesn't matter the quality of the glass. Take the batch along with the color and of course shovel it into a pot. It's called charging a pot. It's shoveled in and the pot is sealed up with a stopper and allowed to cook about approximately 30 hours. Some colors sort of come around faster than ever, maybe 20 hours or maybe 32 hours. He puts a rod in there. He sticks a rod right down into the glass and pulls it out. Then you hold it up like that and you'll see little bubbles in there. Well, if there's bubbles in there, that's not quite cooked enough. So you put that back in, let it cook some more and then later on you take another fruit. And you can see if your glass is clear enough. We use apple wood on the end of the steel rod and do what we call boiling the glass and actually churn it up so to speak. The glass is cooking on the bottom up to the top and vice versa. The gatherer certainly has a very important job because once he gathers a piece of glass, that is it. And the gatherers do the wrong amount whether it be too much or too little and the whole item will end up wrong even though it is a very shape. The first piece of food will be broken on the shot to check the weight to see how thick the walls are. I would say boiling. I would say that's the hardest to learn. And you might learn to do it real quick and maybe the other fellow will never learn it. Just bring it up slow and as it fills up, it will just turn harder all the time. You could tell right away when it's filled. If you blow too hard, there will just be streaks all over. It's what they call mole mark. When I was learning my trade, I worked in a blowing room and when I quit, I could blow. I could gather and I could still go out there and probably gather glass. I couldn't blow and I couldn't pull stands because I don't have the knack of doing it. We have had boys that come in here and look at this and say, oh, I could never do that. It's because they don't want to try to do it. When I started to work here, I was making $2.60 a day and for nine hours. At that time, you'd be surprised you had to take your turn. You was only allowed to go ahead and practice maybe a half hour a week and we couldn't wait until the weekend until that time come, which was on Saturday morning. They had let us go ahead and practice for a half hour. You'd go out there and you see those kids carrying in and that. They don't even want to go in there and learn to blow glass. Normally, on a stem shop, they're working four out, which is there's four pieces of glass on that shop at one time in some phase. You've got the half on the blower is putting the stem on one. They are putting the foot on one and they're carrying one away. One person on that shop can throw it out of line. If everybody does their job, you just work even and you don't work hard. On mold, you don't have to. We don't put that in water. You don't turn that. You just put it in there and blow. Two different types of shops. You have a stem shop and a tumbler shop. Actually, a tumbler shop consists of four people. It should be the getter, the getter of the glass out of the furnace, the blower, which would blow the glass into the mold to shape it. We're cracking off person. This would crack the glass off of the pipe after we turn it back in. We're carrying in person if we carry it from the shop into a tempering layer. So, four people. On a stem shop, since we had a stem in prep, we would have six people. Some jobs are more difficult to blow than others. Now, we've got wars out here that I can't give every job to. I've got to give it something that he can make. Some more difficult job. I've got special guys to give that to. They can't all do the same thing. The blower would be the boss of the shop, but the getter's temper would determine how many pieces would be made in our period. I've made it in the neighborhood of 3,000 moles since I've been here. Most of those, well, maybe in the neighborhood of 50% of them, we had to make patterns for it. So, you start out from scratch, you get your wood, you go ahead and turn out your wooden pattern, you put your hinges on it, you get it ready to take to the foundry, and when it comes back, it comes back in metal, and then we've got to finish it. The mole will just last forever. If it was left to just cool to room temperature by itself, it would cool in five minutes or so and undoubtedly blow up or break because of the manufacturing strains in this glass because the handling of it and the tools against it, what have you, so it goes into an annealing layer, which actually is a conveyor belt inside of an oven, temperature starting at 900 degrees and gradually cooling as it goes back. Our layer runs three hours, it moves about three and a half inches a minute, and so we're coming down, we have a controlled cooling coming down from 900 degrees to room temperature, so we've taken the strain out of the glass. In a glass house, every person's secondary job is inspector. If there's something wrong with the item, throw it away because the faster we throw it away, the less money we put into a bad piece that will be thrown away eventually. Every item in manufacture has a top on it. This is the part that's against the pipe, so we then must, as we call it, crack off the top to the right height. We do this by putting a score, a little scratch on the item at desired height, and it spins around on a pedestal with little jets of flame hitting the item, and as the item spins around, it's heated at the one point where the scratch is, and when it spins long enough, depending on the thickness of the glass, the top actually pops off where it breaks, it cracks all the way around, it breaks right where the fire has hit it. So then we just drop the top off and go with the next day. We've had people watch the operation in the hot metal department for 10 minutes and say, well, do you manufacture anything beside vases and smooth the top? We must then round off or glaze the top. We put the items on a, as we call it, a glazing machine, which sits on a pod which spins and we fire polish the rim of the glass, actually melting over the top, controlled melting, to put the round edge on the glass. Well, this puts the round edge on the glass, but it also reheats the top and takes the temperament out of the top of the glass. So it, coming off the glazer, must be put into a re-annealing later for another three hour, three and a half hour process. And if we didn't, the top would be very brittle and possibly in the washing it would just ring right off. Well, I have been marking, I started about around 32 years ago working here. It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and you have to have really some talent to do this kind of work. You have to get accuracy and speed, too, to keep up and keep your patterns marked up and keep the cutters all in work. We have a sample of every cut pattern, whether it be the goblet or the sherbet or the wine or the cordure or the tea. So we bring the sample out and adjust some rods which actually block out the pattern. Not design it out, but block out, space it out, and we set up the spacing rods with the sample that's already cut. Take it away and then remark each piece just for spacing. So if the cutter knows a certain portion of the pattern is below the line, a certain portion goes above the line, or a certain portion goes in between the lines, the marking is done with a red-lead paint so that it won't come off with water because there's always water on the wheel and on the glass, and it will end up with a elaborate cut halfway through the guidelines marked off. When I first came here and started to work, we had quite a few more patterns and blanks, but now we don't have quite as many to remember. These stones, they come from up in the northern part of Ohio. They bring them in and we have to let the stone line it up and then we shape the stone to fit the glass. From the time we bring a new stone in and let it up and shape it, it takes around five, six hours. Sometimes we have to change the stone often for different types of glass. It uses the stone up faster. After you have the stone shaped and everything, it isn't too much of a job to cut the glass. It takes a long time to learn that. I've been here quite a few years. I've been here 28 years. I've had several, I've tried to learn it. I've worked maybe four or five years and then they'd give it up and just find something better. When I started in the glass factory, you just thought I had to take any job you found regardless of what it was. Something that I wouldn't have as a young fellow nowadays to get into. Of course I've got a boy coming up. I wouldn't want to see him come in and learn my trade. They're things that are for him to learn and cut in glass. You take a look at the pattern and you just about know exactly what stone to pick up to put on to make that type of cut. Of course if you don't know that, well you're not going to know glass carving. It's just like an artist. He knows what paints to use to make it a different color. We use a cork wheel to polish the blemishes that are still being manufactured. We generally polish them on a natural cork. I presume, I don't know, but I presume we're probably the only woods left today that make up our own corks. And on that we use a combination of rotten stone and pumice stone as a mud base to polish it. The cork polishing is very effective and it's very brilliant where we could use it, that's what we do. We have to ask the polishing because you can't allow to get down to those real small cuts. Any man tells you he can cut anything when you're looking at a lot of it. But there is a man alive that can cut anything. In two years you can learn how to cut the matter but you spend the rest of your life and still never be a florist. It's more demanding. It takes entirely deep concentration at all times. You can't be under any pressure. As you notice, there's nobody walking around. There's nobody leaning over your shoulder. They leave you alone. You know your job and you go ahead and do it. The shame is not any more of us than what they are. But most of them are died off. There is a personal satisfaction that you get that you achieve something but after a day's work you're tired like anybody else and you're ready to go home. The red lead paint will not come off with water. That's why we use red lead paint so that in the cutting process we're not erasing our guidelines. So it's a banana oil and water solution that is used at the end where it's washed and wiped. It smells like a fruit market in summer. Really no perfect piece of glass. Just like there's no perfect diamond. But I think Seneca has the most perfect piece of glass as you will find anywhere.