BOTTLE, a vessel designed to hold liquids, constructed of various materials and in various forms according to the necessities of local manufacture and the demands of the kind of liquid to be enclosed. It is now un derstood to mean a vessel made of glass, with a more or less narrow neck and mouth. In ancient times, however, the bottle was nothing more than a skin of some animal. Thus the Biblical aphorism concerning the putting of new wine into old bottles as an illustration of folly means that it would not be wise to trust a new wine, while yet active with fermentation, to the chance of bursting a leathern vessel necessarily weakened by use and age. In Spain, Turkey, India and some parts of South America to this day, various skins, and especially that of the goat, are used for containing wine and water. The hide is stripped from the animal as entire as possible and the various natural openings having been sewed up, with the exception of that of one of the legs, which is retained as a nozzle, the vessel is ready, after a certain preliminary curing of the skin, for the re ception of the wine. The peculiar taste of Amontillado sherry is supposed to be owing to the fact of its being kept in leather. The ordinary bottle is, however, of glass. The various bottles used for different well-known purposes are generally distinguished by pecu liar shapes and sizes, as, for example, the English wine, beer, ale and soda bottles, the French champagne, Burgundy and claret, and the Rhenish wine bottles. Port wine is oc casionally put into very large bottles, called magnums, and adds in still larger ones termed carboys. Until 1880 bottles were made by hand. The bottle blower gathered the molten glass on the end of his blow-pipe through which he blew with his mouth, producing a hollow ball. When this was large enough it
was placed in an iron mould to shape it and was then blown into its permanent shape. The molds were made of brass or iron kept at nearly a red heat when in use. A common form was of the two sides hinged together. The invention of blowing machines has rev olutionized the industry by enabling greater numbers to be produced and by greatly reduc ing the cost. In machine operation the glass is melted in the usual way in a furnace and is then run into a revolving pot about 20 feet in diameter. The object is to have a constant fresh surface of hot glass into which the gathering mold is dipped. The gathering molds are affixed to a revolving table and are generally in three pieces, a bottom and two hinged body sections. The proper quantity of glass is placed in a mold which is auto matically closed as the table revolves. It comes next under a plunger by which the i mold is firmly closed, the neck of the bottle formed and the bottle blown to the desired shape by compressed air which is automat ically admitted at the correct moment as the mold-table revolves. In the next stage the mold is automatically opened and the hot bottle removed when the mold proceeds to the next cycle of operations. The bottle is then placed in an annealing oven and is allowed to cool very gradually. The average bottle ma chine has a capacity of over 100 gross a day as compared with 15 gross a day for three men and three boys under the old hand sys tem.