(2 of 5)
First U. S. installation of invisible glass was made last September at Marcus & Co., Manhattan jewelers. To startled passersby, it seemed that rich jewels and rare diamonds were theirs for the taking. Last week the illusion became something of a reality. Some miscreant, gazing at a jewelry-display behind the invisible pane, returned with hammer & chisel, chopped a hole in invisibility, walked off with three diamond rings worth $36,000. Police soon caught the culprit, recovered two of the three rings. Other invisible glass windows have been installed at the Chrysler Building showroom, Lord & Taylor's, Brooks Bros, and Woodward & Lothrop (Washington). Installations are being made at Mandel Bros. (Chicago) and Jordan Marsh (Boston).
President of Libbey-Owens-Ford is John David Biggers, one of the old Owens Bottle Co. executives in the days before Owens became Owens-Illinois. After leaving Owens in 1926, he was managing director of Dodge Bros. (Britain) Ltd., for one year, later vice president of Graham Brothers Corp., still later of Graham-Paige International Corp. Then he got out of motors and back into glass, has been head of Libbey-Owens-Ford since 1930.
The other big flat glass company is Pittsburgh Plate Glass, which at one time had the makings of a plate glass trust. Established by John Ford and John Pitcairn in 1883, it was the first successful U. S. plate glass company, made all but a small fraction of the domestic plate glass output. When Mr. Ford and Mr. Pitcairn disagreed, the Fords got out and Edward Ford, son of Founder John, founded a company which later joined Messrs. Libbey and Owens* to form in Libbey-Owens-Ford an eternal rival to Pittsburgh Plate. Although largest flat glassmaker. Pittsburgh Plate also expanded into the paint business and now ranks second to Sherwin-Williams as a U. S. paintmaker. But glass has a better profit margin, and Pittsburgh has by no means lost interest in glass. It got into safety glass through E. I. du Pont de Nemours, which made the binder, and for a while went 50-50 with the du Fonts in safety glass manufacture. In 1930 Pittsburgh bought out the du Pont interest. So, like Libbey-Owens-Ford, Pittsburgh rode along with the motor boom and its 1935 earnings are estimated at about $8,250,000, as against $5,760,000 in 1934.
Pittsburgh's specialties include Carrara structural glass—an opaque plate glass with a highly polished surface. It was originally made for use in countertops and tabletops, graduated into wainscotting for hallways and bathrooms, last year was used in store fronts. Pittsburgh also makes Herculite, a glass which will resist temperatures up to 650°. Most spectacular Pittsburgh stunt came last month when Sergeant Frank Shannon, champion marksman of the Newark, N. J. police force, fired a round of Thompson submachine gun bullets at Night-Club Singer Ella Logan. Though only 30 feet from the "Tommy-gun," Miss Logan smiled, powdered her nose, survived. Between the singer and the Sergeant stood a sheet of Pittsburgh's bullet-proof glass, which is the same as safety glass, only more so. Instead of two layers of glass with one binder, it has four layers of glass with three binders. Made in thicknesses up to two inches, it is designed for use in banks, payroll windows, armored cars.