Irving Wightman Colburn was an American inventor and manufacturer. Colburn developed a process for the production of continuous flat glass disks which made the mass production for window panes possible. Colburn began his experiments in 1899. In one patent for a machine to produce flat glass on 25 March 1902.
Irving Wightman Colburn (16 May 1861 – 4 September 1917) was an American inventor and manufacturer.

Colburn developed a process for the production of continuous flat glass disks which made the mass production for window panes possible. Colburn began his experiments in 1899. In one patent for a machine to produce flat glass on 25 March 1902. He created the Colburn Machine Glass Co. in August 1906. In 1908 he installed two machines, before the technology had developed, and in 1911 he became bankrupt. Toledo Glass Company bought Colburn’s patents in 1912. He then improved the process with Toledo Glass, and its first successful result occurred on 25 November 1913. The company then became the Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass company in 1916.
Fluxes lower the temperature at which the formers will melt. Sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate, both alkalis, are common fluxes.Stabilisers make the glass strong and water resistant. Calcium carbonate, often called calcined limestone, is a stabiliser, without which, water and humidity attack and dissolve glass. Depending on the composition of the glass being made, melting occurs over a range of temperatures, usually 590 to 760 degrees Celsius.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that in 1830 French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas demonstrated that soda-lime-silica glass was strongest “when the ratio of the three was 1:1:6; this is essentially the modern soda-lime-silica composition”.
Today, our light-filled homes and workplaces, constructed with vast expanses of glass windows, owe much to several competing inventors, but on 25 March 1902, Irving Wightman Colburn patented a machine that made the mass production of glass for windows possible.