law of diminishing returns. A concept in economics that if one factor of production (number of workers, for example) is increased while other factors (machines and workspace, for example) are held constant, the output per unit of the variable factor will eventually diminish.
History of glass. The history of glassmaking can be traced back to 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia, but Mesopotamians may have created second-rate copies of glass objects from Egypt, where this complex craft actually originated. Other archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made in coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or Egypt.
1899: The first glass-blowing machine is patented by Michael Owens, making glass bottles available for soda pop. A wide variety of other pharmacists and inventors created many other carbonated beverages throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. C. Alf, a Charleston, S.C., druggist, may have been the first soda bottler in America. Reports Reggie Lynch of the Southeast Bottle Club, He learned his technique from Paris druggists who were pioneers in carbonated beverage bottling. The first type of bottle was the pyramid shape which had a defect in design with the neck being too thin. This defect, along with the fact that he was only a bottler for one and a half years, has made the pyramid the rarest of the colored sodas.. Lynch sold the C. Alfs bottle pictured here for $9,600 a few years ago.