THINKING IN GLASS
By J. S. QUALEY

MOST of our giant oil refineries have glass skeletons in their closets. Before they spill one drop of gasoline, lubricants or other by-products of crude into the pipe lines or the stomachs of water, rail and highway tankers, their efficiency at squeezing out every cubic centimeter of value has been planned and proved in glass models sitting atop stone tables in engineering laboratories.

Actual creators of these refineries are the glass constructionists who fashion the prototypes. Typical of scientific glass blowers are three men in the laboratory of the M. W, Kellogg Company plant in Jersey City, N. J.—master glass constructionist T. A. Graf, and his staff of two, Robert Connelly and James Margiotta.

This was a really interesting read. I honestly had no idea how a steel was made. I wonder if it’s still done the same way.

Steel – Backbone of the Modern World
by Robert W. Gordon

A WORLD without steel—try to imagine it! Without steel, the whole physical structure of the modern world would collapse. Lacking this one all-important substance, the civilization we know would cease to exist. There was, of course, civilization long before the discovery of steel, but it was vastly different from ours; so different that it requires an effort of the will to picture a world without steel.

How Light Bulbs Are Made

1 Pictures on this page show the steps in the process of making electric light bulbs. First, the tungsten wire filament is drawn through diamond dies. So fine is this wire, one-quarter the diameter of a hair, that it is extremely difficult to see it

2 Here is the mechanical spider that takes the fine tungsten wire and winds it around a steel wire form to shape the filament. An attendant watches the process through a microscope to be sure the spacing is accurate