This short 1948 documentary from Encyclopedia Brittanica Films describes how glass for residential homes is made. It starts with the mining and processing of the individual ingredients including limestone, sand, and soda ash. Then there is a demonstration of a man in a lab coat creating glass on an “artisanal” scale to demonstrate how the process works. Finally, it follows the production of windows on an industrial scale from the glass factory to the window factory until they end up in a house.

0:14 Title “Making Glass for Houses”, 0:27 shots of different glass windows and walls in houses, 1:01 an excavator digging limestone out of a quarry, 1:40 truck dumps limestone into a stone crushing machine and the camera follows the process, 2:14 finely crushed limestone coming out at the end of the process, 2:21 a dynamite explosion loosens sand in a hillside, 2:36 man uses a firehose to wash down the sand, 3:13 overview of a sand mine and the piping system that leads to the mill, 3:33 a freight car being loaded with sand, 3:42 a chemical plant producing soda ash, 4;14 a man in a lab coat carefully combines the three ingredient to make glass in a lab, 4:58 centrifuges spinning to mix the materials, 5:22 the scientists puts on heat protective clothing, prepares the furnace, and places the mixture inside, 5:58 the melted glass mixture is poured into a form, 6:29 bins full of glass mixture in a glass factory, 6:59 1000 LBS of glass mixture put into an industrial furnace, 7:30 a continuous sheet of glass drawn out of the molten glass, 8:10 large sheets of glass being cut by a factory employee and then inspected, 8:58 a glass cutter placing the glass on the table and cutting it into smaller pieces, 9:24 men in a window making factory putting glass into frames, 10:08 shots of the same windows from the start of the film, 10:33 Title “EB Films”

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