Consolidated Window Glass Co. v. Window Glass Mach Co.

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit
• Citation: Consolidated Window Glass Co. v. Window Glass Mach Co., 261 F. 362 (3rd Cir. 1919)
• Decision Date: 13 October 1919
• Docket Number: 2443-2447.
• Parties: CONSOLIDATED WINDOW GLASS CO. v. WINDOW GLASS MACH. CO. et al. [1]

261 F. 362

CONSOLIDATED WINDOW GLASS CO. v. WINDOW GLASS MACH. CO. et al. ^[1]

Nos. 2443-2447.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

October 13, 1919

Marshall A. Christy and Robert D. Totten, both of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Charles Neave, of New York City (James I. Kay, of Pittsburgh Pa., and A. W. Bright, of Washington, D.C., of counsel), for appellants.

Clarence P. Byrnes and George H. Parmelee, both of Pittsburgh, Pa (Livingston Gifford, of New York City, of counsel), for appellees.

Before BUFFINGTON, WOOLLEY, and HAIGHT, Circuit Judges.

BUFFINGTON Circuit Judge.

This case concerns window glass, a product which enters into practically every home and structure in the country. It covers a great pioneer step in this universal art, when to its customary and time-used method of blowing such window glass by human skill, 'man-blown glass,' there was added the mechanical exactness and increased production of 'machine-drawn glass.' That step gave to a machine and a mechanical process the equivalent of the fine skill of the most skillful of artisans, and of artisans who dealt with the most difficult to handle of products, viz., molten glass which was changing its nature every second it was handled. This step freed the window glass art and its universally used product from the absolute domination and monopoly of a small body of skilled artisans, whose organization absolutely controlled its operation and the amount and price of its output. This change enabled some 70 ordinary mechanical employes, with the help of machinery, to produce the product theretofore made by substantially 600 blowers, whose exacting work was often done at the expense of their health, for the glass-blower's work, with its abnormal lung expansion often caused physical decline. This change also brought about a decreased price of a universally used product. The machine-drawn output is now two-thirds of the window glass product of the United States, and this machine-drawn process and apparatus have been such that within a few years after they began in the latter country they have been adopted and used in England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Japan, and also in Canada.

The width of the change from the hand-blown process of the old era to the machine-drawn process of the new, is best illustrated by a brief description of both. To make a square sheet, from which panes of window glass can be cut, it is necessary to have a cylinder or roller whose sides are of uniform thickness and whose length is about 4 or 5 feet. Such a cylinder, or sectional cylinder, must be then split or parted on a straight line through its entire length, and then placed, with such split uppermost, in a heated furnace. As the glass softens, the sides of the cylinder recede from this longitudinal split, and we have the rectangular sheet of glass desired, from which, after certain flattening, annealing, and cleaning processes have been applied to it, panes of window glass of appropriate size may be cut. The formation of such cylinders, or sectional cylinders, is the aim of both the hand-blowing and machine-drawing methods; but the blower could only make one cylinder at a time, and this of a length limited to say 4 or 5 feet, and a diameter of say 10 inches, while by the machine-drawn method a cylinder of say 38 feet in length and 38 inches in diameter, and capable of being cut into five or nine subsections or rollers, could be produced. In doing this, the blower used a tool called a blowpipe, which consisted of a hollow stem through which he blew, and a bell-shaped enlargement at its end, on which he manipulated the molten glass. Taking this blowpipe, a workman, called a 'gatherer,' first inserted the bell-shaped, heated end of the blowpipe into a pot or tank of molten glass, and rotated it so as to gather a small mass of such molten glass on such end. The pipe was then taken to the cooling tub, where the pipe shaft or stem was cooled, and the glass shaped or cooled on the surface. This operation was repeated three times, which gave to the mass successive layers of glass like the skin of an onion. The glass lump, which still remained plastic, was then shaped by turning it in a suitably cooled wooden or metal block having a shaped cavity. The blower then took the tool with the glass mass on its end, and blew in some air by his lungs, while still turning the mass in the blower block. This gave it a rough pear shape. The glass was then reheated in the 'blow furnace,' and the blower then swung the depending plastic mass in a trench, and while turning or twirling the pipe blew into it at intervals. By this operation, the size of the glass structure was determined by the air blown in, the glass being meanwhile elongated by gravity and the centrifugal effect of swinging, and at the same time the whole mass was kept symmetrical in form by twirling. During such manipulation the glass became too cold to work, and it was again reheated in the blow furnace, and again elongated by the intermittent steps of swinging, twirling, and blowing, until a cylinder of equal diameter and thickness through its entire length was formed. When this was done, the end of the cylinder or 'roller' thus formed was heated in the blow furnace, and the closed end blown open. The roller was then laid horizontally on a horse or rack, and the blowpipe was broken or cracked off the one end, and the other or rounded end of the cylinder was then 'capped off,' or severed by wrapping around it a thread of hot glass and touching it with a cold iron; the expansion by reason of the hot thread and the contraction by reason of the cold iron, resulting in a straight cut of the cylinder on a line at right angles with the horizontal length of the cylinder itself. These rollers or small cylinders, so produced by glass blowers, were, as we have said, from 5 to 6 feet in length, and 8 or 10 inches in diameter, and weighed about 20 pounds, though their weight in glass of double strength might run over 50 pounds. The rapid and skillful handling of this swiftly changing, molten mass, the difficulties and skill of manipulation, and the requirement that the finished product should be of even thickness throughout, manifestly necessitated work of the highest skill, coupled with great strength and endurance. This skill was of such a character that three years of apprenticeship was often required to learn it, even by a man who was familiar with the work incident to such blowing, and the workmen were so restricted in numbers and of such individual skill that they formed a labor organization which absolutely dominated that industry. ^[1a]

A visit, at the time of the argument of this case, of the members of this court to a glass factory near Pittsburgh, showed them the machine-drawing method of making window glass. The extent of the operations of this factory, and the call for molten glass, were such as to necessitate the use of a tank to keep up the supply of glass required. This tank, of course, had nothing to do with the patents here involved; but, as a part of a practically continuous process from the raw material to the flattened sheets of window glass, we note that such a vital element as the tank and the process therein employed, for keeping up the continuous supply of glass, will be found described in the case of Siemens v. Chambers (C.C.) 51 F. 902, a case decided in this circuit, and in that connection it is in evidence in this case that one of the beneficent effects of the installation and successful use of the machine-drawn process was to permit the use of the tank, and the savings and product increase due to that economical agent of efficiency and to the use of which the glass blowers had always objected. In this tank a huge bowl at the end of a long handle, which was suspended by a chain from an overhead runway, was dipped into the tank mouth and filled with molten glass. The dipper was then swung around and the glass carried to a glass pot, from which the molten glass was to be machine-drawn. It will here be noted that the use of this pot, situate at some distance from the tank, was the method used in this particular factory, while the alleged infringing method used, and with which we are here concerned, consisted in working the molten glass, not in a pot, but in a structure situated alongside of and drawing its glass directly from the tank.

But, to return to the factory visited, it will be noted that the machinery by which this draw is there effected was centered in a platform about 40 feet above the molten glass. This platform contained the different mechanisms required, and had suspended from it the mechanical semblance of a glass-blower's tool. This tool was a hollow pipe about 5 or 6 feet in length, at the bottom of which was a circular piece of steel, the whole tool somewhat resembling a mushroom stem, with the top or umbrella inverted. From a cage in front of the mechanism, where the single operator, who controls the operation, watched and operated, the drawing tool or bait, as it is technically termed, was caused to slowly descend. As the cage or mechanism was lowered along guideways which reached nearly to the pot, the inside of the steel bait dipped into the molten glass, which entered and filled the interior of the bait. As the bait had an interior edge or knuckle at its lower part, a circular rim of glass was at once formed by the molten glass coming in contact with the cooling steel. This solid rim thus formed was the start and support for the drawing operation which followed. As the bait slowly emerged from the pot of molten glass, a cylinder began to form, in a shape resembling a great demijohn; that is first the neck, then the gradually expanding shoulders, then the main or cylinder...