The earliest bottles or vessels were made by ancient man. Ingredients were melted to make glass and then
clay forms were dipped into the molten liquid. When the glass cooled off, the clay was chipped out of the inside leaving just the hollow glass vessel. This glass was very thin as the fire was not as hot as modern-day furnaces. The
blowpipe was invented around 1 B.C. This allowed
molten glass to be gathered on the end of the blow pipe and blown into the other end to create a hollow vessel. Eventually, the use of a
mould was introduced, followed by the invention of a semi-automatic machine, called the Press and Blow, by Yorkshire Iron founder, Howard Matravers Ashley, in 1886. In 1904,
Michael Owens invented the automatic bottle machine, after working on the production of
electric lightbulbs, in
Ohio, for Edison. Once made, bottles may suffer from internal stresses as a result of unequal, or too rapid cooling. An
annealing oven, or 'lehr', is used to cool glass containers slowly to prevent
stress and make the bottle stronger. When a glass bottle filled with liquid is dropped or subjected to shock, the
water hammer effect may cause
hydrodynamic stress, breaking the bottle. == Characteristics ==