Architectural glass percent of the world's flat glass is produced by the float glass process invented in the 1950s by Sir Alastair Pilkington of Pilkington Glass, in which molten glass is poured onto one end of a molten tin bath. The glass floats on the tin, and levels out as it spreads along the bath, giving a smooth face to both sides. The glass cools and slowly solidifies as it travels over the molten tin and leaves the tin bath in a continuous ribbon. The glass is then annealed by cooling in an oven called a lehr. The finished product has near-perfect
Pidgeon process batch process in which finely powdered calcined dolomite and ferrosilicon are mixed, briquetted, and charged in retorts made of nickel-chrome-steel alloy. The hot reaction zone portion of the retort is either gas fired, coal fired, or electrically heated in a furnace, while the condensing section equipped with removable baffles extends from the furnace and is water-cooled. Due to distillation, very high purity magnesium crowns are produced, which are then remelted and cast into ingots. The usual metallurgic use of carbon as the reducing agent instead if silicon cannot be used, because the silicon dioxide is a solid, while carbon dioxide