One of the platforms revolves close to the furnace door, and as each mold comes around it automatically opens and the gatherer draws from the furnace enough glass for the bottle which is being made at the time, and places it in the mold.  The mold closes, and the platform turns on, bringing around another mold to the gatherer.  Meanwhile a nozzle has snapped down over the first mold, shaping the neck of the bottle, and beginning the blowing.  As the mold comes to a point diametrically opposite the furnace door it opens again, and a handler takes the blank, as the bottle is called at this stage, and places it in a mold on the second revolving platform.  This mold closes and compressed air blows out the bottle as the platform revolves.  As the mold comes around to the handler again it opens and the handler takes out the finished bottle, replacing it with a new blank drawn from the mold on the first platform.  This operation necessitates only three men—­a gatherer, a handler, and a carrier-off.  It is also much faster than the old method—­an average of about forty bottles per minute as against barely twenty.

A newer development of this machine does away with the gatherer.  A long rod of refractory clay is given a churning movement in the mouth of the furnace, forcing the molten glass thru a tube.  As enough glass for one bottle appears at the mouth of the tube a knife cuts the mass and the blob of glass falls into a trough which conveys it to the blank mold.  By an ingenious device the same trough is made to feed three or four machines at one time.  As many as fifty bottles a minute can be turned out by this combination blowing machine and feeder.

But the apotheosis of bottle-making is to be seen in another factory in the south Jersey district.  Here it is the boast of the superintendents that from the time the sand goes out of the freight cars in which it is brought to the plant till the finished bottle is taken by the packer, no human hand touches the product; and their statement is amply confirmed by a trip thru the plant.  The sand, coloring matter and cullet are in separate bins; an electrical conveyor takes enough of each for a batch to a mixing machine; from there the batch goes on a long belt to the furnace.  At the front of the furnace, instead of doors or mouths, is a revolving pan, kept level full with the molten glass.  Outside the furnace revolves a huge machine with ten arms, each of which carries its own mold and blowpipe.  As each arm passes over the pan in the furnace the proper amount of glass is sucked into the mold by vacuum; the bottle is blown and shaped in the course of one revolution, and the mold, opening, drops the finished bottle into a rack which carries it to the lehr on a belt.  It passes thru the lehr to the packers; and as each rack is emptied of its bottles the packers place it again on the belt, which carries it up to the machine, where it collects its cargo of hot bottles and conducts it again thru