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Reminiscences 31 of 123
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difference, the shapes of the various tools are the same.
At the best, the manufacturers of glass in France
were for a long period much inferior to the Venetians and Bohemians; but
after the introduction of window-glass, from Venice, the making of crystal
glass greatly extended and correspondingly improved.
In the year 1665 the government of France, desirous
of introducing the manufacture of window-glass, offered sufficient inducement
in money and privileges to a number of French artists (who had acquired the
process at Murano, at Venice) to establish works at
Tourtanville. At these works the same system
of blowing was followed as that used in the Venetian glass-works.
A workman, under this system, named Thevart, discovered
the art of casting plate-glass, and obtained from the government a
patent for the term of thirty years. He erected extensive works in
Paris, and succeeded in what was then deemed an extraordinary feat,
casting plates eighty-four inches by fifty inches, thereby exciting
unbounded admiration.
The credit of the invention of casting plates of
glass belongs to France, and the mode then adopted exists to the present
day, with but slight
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