The Root Glass Company to design and exclusively manufacture a "new bottle, a distinctive package" for Coca-Cola. Chapman J. Root formed a design team for the contest consisting of plant supervisor Alexander Samuelson, auditor Clyde Edwards, and staff machinist Earl R. Dean. The now worldwide "Contour Bottle" icon was then patterned after the cocoa plant pod that was researched by Clyde Edwards and Earl Dean at the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library in Terre Haute. Once a sketch was made at the library by Earl Dean, he worked through the night adapting the sketch to a hand machined mold depicting the curved cocoa pod as
Seneca Glass Company supply of natural gas was becoming depleted. The Fostoria Glass Company decided to move to West Virginia—a homecoming for its management. During the 1880s, a group of glassmakers (and neighbors) from the Black Forest region of Germany moved to Cumberland, Maryland, to work in the city's glass factories. These men were skilled in art glassmaking, and hoped to someday start their own business where they could fully utilize their talents. During 1891, it became known that the Fostoria Glass Company planned to move away from Fostoria. The Black Forest glassmakers held a meeting on August 10, and formed a company