When he was 17, Karl Alberti was good enough with automotive glass that a couple of managers from PPG (then, Pittsburgh Plate Glass) visited him in Findlay, Ohio, and told him they’d run him “out of town in six months” if he didn’t follow their distribution system.
The threat only encouraged Alberti to keep doing things his way–and to favor Libbey-Owens-Ford products and distribution.
That was in the late 1930s. Today the glass expert sees that threat as a boost to his career–one of many experiences he is weaving into the book he hopes to publish in May.
“I’m calling it `A History of the Auto Glass Industry, or, the Good Old Glass Business Ain’t What It Used to Be,’ ” he said from his office in Toledo, where he is a consultant to Harmon Glass. Harmon is underwriting the book. He set his deadline to have copies of the book ready for attendees at the 1996 annual meeting of the National Glass Association May 9 through 11 in Phoenix.
According to his research:
– Rear window de-foggers date from the 1960s, about a decade after solar glass helped cut down on the amount of sunlight, with its damaging infrared and ultraviolet radiation, entering a vehicle.
– Adhesives for attaching glass are “a hot topic” because they are a chemical situation. Adhesive-set windshields contribute approximately 20 percent to the structural integrity of the vehicle. The cure times required to achieve adequate strength to meet federal safety standards are affected by temperature and humidity, increasing in colder climates.
As for major glass events, Alberti cited the Pilkington-devised float method of production (1959) as very important in making thin glass, and the oil crisis of 1973 as a stimulus for building smaller cars with higher percentages of glass areas.
(In the glass float process, developed in 1959 by Sir Alastair Pilkington, a continuous ribbon of glass moves out of the melting furnace and floats along a bath of molten tin. The ribbon is kept at high temperatures so any irregularities will melt out.
Because the surface of the molten tin is flat, the glass also becomes flat and parallel.
While on the molten tin, the ribbon is cooled until the surfaces are hard enough for it to be taken out of the bath without rollers marking the bottom surface. The resulting product is a glass with a uniform thickness and a bright, fire-polished surface.)
A good example of a car with a high percentage of glass, said Alberti, was the American Motors Pacer.
This mid-1970s egg-shaped coupe/wagon had huge windows. The ones on the passenger doors were so tall they didn’t roll completely down, a fact disguised by a ledge in the doors.
Alberti bought one in 1976 and another in 1977. “It had great visibility, but the glass often fogged up.”
