Characteristics of Semi-Automatic Machine-Made Bottles

Newly discovered characteristics of some semi-automatic machine-made bottles.

For decades, I have read that there is "no way to tell whether a bottle was produced on a semiautomatic or fully automatic machine, aside from the Owens scar" (SHA bottle research website Owens Company Part 1 p.174 summarizing Jones and Sullivan 1989). With the utmost respect to my predecessors, this is not entirely true. But let me be clear, the characteristics presented here don't cover them all, I'm sure. There were lots of different machines.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am working on a collection of bottles from Vancouver, BC, that are tightly dated from ca. 1905  to ca.1913-16. Within this collection I have examples of mould blown, semi-automatic, and fully automatic machine-made bottles. And sometimes you CAN tell the difference. The Ashley machine is pretty straight-forward and it seems most other British semi-automatics followed their basic structure.

The first semi-automatic machine that commercially produced a container with a narrow mouth was patented in England in 1886: the Ashley Machine by Howard M. Ashley. The machine was again patented in the United States in 1889 and 1890 under patent numbers US416149A and US433062 (seen below).  

The Ashley was a blow-and-blow machine, with the initial cavity in the parison being air blown by the machines. This particular bottle-making machine was the first to successfully create the finish (mouth and lip) of a narrow-mouthed bottle as part of the parison before moving it (with finish still in its mould) to the final mould to blow the rest of the bottle. 

The finish and neck were created in combined inverted moulds with an open top where the base of the bottle would be. A puff of air would be blown into the parison (or glob of glass initially gathered for a bottle) from below to create a holllow for further air to be blown (Fig 1). The mould rotated to the upright position and the parison mould would be removed while the  finish and neck mould remained. So you had the neck and finish in their mould with a parison hanging down from it - and that would go to the final mould (Fig. 3) where the bottle shape would be finalized (Fig. 4).

The result from that action meant that you would get a bottle with mould seams up and over the lip of the bottle (like any machine made bottle), with ghost seams going part way down the bottle, but you don't get ghost seams coming up from the base or the Owens scar. Here you can see ghost seams coming down from the finish:

 

Ashley machine ghost seams running down from finish (look here for video showing it more clearly)

I've also noticed on some of these bottles that of the two seams just under the finish one is very fine, the other is more bulky as in the photo below and the first photo above. Also note that there is a  flaw on the bottom of the string rim that seems to be associated with this larger seam mark below. Haven't quite figured out the mechanics of this yet, but it might have something to do with the type of machine - possibly using a finish/parison mould, then a body mould, and a final finish/neck mould. The bulky mark lines up with the body mould seams.

Here are other examples of truncated ghost seams coming down from the top:

#248

 

An Owens machine will always have the ghost seams coming up right from the base and usually truncating before the shoulder (but definitely before the finish), as well as having an Owens scar on the base:

 

Owen's machine ghost seams running up from base, final seams running from base up the bottle and over the finish or lip (the "texture" in the seams comes from the lighting). 

 

Base showing typical Owens scar - the photo is not reversed, the "2" is.

Ghost seams are one way to tell that a bottle has been made in two moulds. They are only seen on machine made bottles as mouth blown bottles were made in a single mould. Be careful, though, because a seam on a mouth-blown bottle can truncate before the lip - but the finish will be hand applied with no seams running under, over or up it. (this paragraph will not be "left-aligned" - it refuses)

See also the photos of the  Kilmarnock Whisky bottle.

This Perrier bottle shows the finish mould seams being 90 degrees offset from the body seams. It does seem to have a valve or ejection scar on the base. There is also a circular scar just at the mouth of the bottle. So far, I have not figured out which machine this would have made this bottle, but it is clearly not a fully automated machine bottle. It had a finish mould separate from the body mould, and in the process, the parison only rotated 90 degrees to get to the final body mould. 

Perrier bottle showing vertical finish seam 90 degrees offset from body seams

Perrier bottle showing base with ejection/valve mark

Perrier bottle showing the cup bottom mould and seams going up the side of the bottle - no ghost seams.

Circular impression/scar just at the mouth of the bottle.

The Ashley Machine was the fore-runner of many other semi-automatic bottle making machines in Europe and America. The Ashley Bottle Machine Company failed due to bad management shortly after it was formed, and Bagley & Co. of Knottingley, and Cannington and Shaw of St. Helens bought out the machines of the Ashley Bottle Company (English 1923:334).

In the United States, the Ashley machine (or "Johnny Bull") was utilized first by the Glenshaw Glass Co. of Glenshaw, Pennsylvania in the 1907-1908 season (https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/AshleyMachines.pdf). Glenshaw made catsup, beer, and brandy bottles as well as flasks. In the collection from Vancouver, BC, I have the body and base of an amber-coloured bottle. This bottle has the thick glass indicative of a carbonated beverage bottle (5 mm), and the evidence of having been made in a semi-automatic machine. It is also marked on the base with "435" and "G" (although a little garbled) - I suspect this is an American beer bottle and that it may have been made on a Johnny Bull machine by Glenshaw. The "G" has been attributed to Glenshaw (1895-2004) by glassbottlemarks.com.

#248 - see also image above

Many other companies created their own semi-automatic machines for making small-necked containers. Some of the names I have come across are:

• John Lumb & Co. of Castleford, Yorkshire, England created The Simpson Bradshaw Machine in 1901 (https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=8EHOAAAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.RA1-PA1258-IA1&hl=en_CA p.1259 section VII). By 1913 they had 38 of them and were working on making them all fully automatic (Morgan 2021:128). Not only did they produce bottles for Read Brothers in London, they also started making Johnnie Walker bottles in the early 20th century and continued with them for many years. In 1903, the Simpson patent number US732,902A clearly states that the parison mould is inverted and has a separate finish mould. https://patents.google.com/patent/US732902A/en?oq=US732902A 

Simpson-Bradshaw Patent 1903 - 8 is the inverted parison mould (closed), 40 is the final mould (open).

• Forsters of St. Helens, Merseyside, England made a semi-automatic machine with their own company's name - modified from the Boucher Machine (https://www.arts-et-metiers.net/sites/arts-et-metiers/files/2021-10/field_media_document-385-cp_machine_boucher.pdf) from France (Turner 1938:255).
• The Boucher Machine was patented in 1899 in the US and had specifications for making wine bottles with a kick-up: https://patents.google.com/patent/US665055A/en?oq=US665055A 
• The Horne Machine became popular in Yorkshire and Lancashire in England and were also supplied to France, Germany and the United States (Turner 1938:254).
• The Red Devil was developed by The Root Glass Co. of Terre Haute, Indiana (most famous for developing the Coca-Cola "hobble skirt" bottle) - and it was apparently based on the Ashley.
• The earliest O'Neill machine was a press machine patented in 1898 - had an ejection pin and would create ejection marks.
• The next O'Neill machine was patented in the U.S. in 1911 (source) - it had a suction valve that would attach to the bottom of the parison to stretch it out. That patent and the 1917 patent clearly show the parison mould being inverted and then the final mould being upright. Also had valve for extending the parison creating valve mark.

1911 O'Neill patent US994,421 Fig. 6 shows the initial inverted stage of the parison mould (#9 in figure). That entire mechanism would rotate 180 degrees. Fig. 7 shows the parison mould in upright position and ready to be put into the final bottle mould.

The Hilde (1891) - shows inverted parison. Rod "M" support the base of the mould or base-former.

The Severin (1902)

The Schiller machine (1904) Patent DE157520

From Giegerich and Trier p.130

References:

English, S.

1923 "The Ashley Bottle Machine. A Historical Note." Journal of the Society of Glass Technology v.7 T323-334.

Jones, Olive and Catherine Sullivan with G. L. Miller, E. A. Smith, J. E. Harris, and K. Lunn

1989 The Parks Canada Glass Glossary for the description of containers, tableware, flat glass, and closures. Studies in Archaeology Architecture and History, National Historic Parks and Sites Canadian Parks Service, Environment Canada. Now available online at: Parks Canada Glass Glossary

Lockhart, Bill, Pete Schulz, Russell Hoenig, Phil Perry, Carol Serr, and Bill Lindsey

2018 “The Owens Bottle Co. Part 1 – History” Society for Historical Archaeology Bottle website: https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/OwensBottleCoPart1.pdf 

Giegerich, W, and W. Trier (eds)

1969    Glass Machines: Construction and Operation of Machines for the Forming of Hot Glass. Springer-Verlag New York.

Morgan, Nicholas

2020    A Long Stride: The Story of the World's No. 1 Scotch Whisky. Canongate Books, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Turner, W.E.S.

1938 “The Early Development of Bottle Making Machines in Europe”. Journal of the Society of Glass Technology. 22:250-58