Westfield High School - Weather Vane Yearbook (Westfield, NJ)

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19 3 3 THE WEATHER VANE 19 3 3 GLASS MANUFACTURE IN NEW JERSEY JVIBKR, white flint, emerald green or blue color writhing upward, expanding. overflowing, rising in a pure crystal stream, and sinking finally into a swirl of smooth edges! Another glass goblet completed. The art of glassmaking as practised in ancient Egypt was elemental, for the sons of the Nile had not yet learned the secrets of transparency. Slowly, slowly, glass culture developed, and the fifteenth century rich gazed from glass windows, a luxury which only they could enjoy, and which, in the absence of the family, had to be removed and as carefully stored away as family jewels. Today the United States makes more glass ware than any other nation, for no other country’s purse strings loosen so readily at the sight of exquisite table ware. New Jersey's glass industry centers in Cumberland county where thirty-six establishments are located. “Plumes of smoke from Millville tell that we are in the sand, silicon, and fine quartz region which make that town. Glassboro, Bridge-ville, Salem, and Vineland prosperous as glass blowing cities. The earlier hand-blown ware of New Jersey establishments has given way to modern machine methods. Formerly, a worker blew through the wooden mouthpiece into a metal pipe just dipped into the molten glass. When his bubble was a suitable size, he shaped it with a mould on the outside, and on the inside, with air pressure from his lungs. Today the sand is taken from freight cars, mixed, passed into the furnace, melted and fired bv extreme heat; then the glass is carried from the furnace to machines where compressed air, in place of the human blower, both operates the machines and shapes the glass. At length it is placed in a hot place to cool gradually and prevent brittleness, a process called annealing, and finally it is revolved and inspected without the touch of a human hand. Marjorie Grove, ’33. Eighteen

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5 »| THE CLASS OF 1933