Since the Industrial Revolution, glass began to be mass-produced, sometimes in an automated process, so that not all glassware produced were hand blown glass anymore. One big contributor to this development was the German scientist Otto Schott and Ernst Abbe, who studied chemical compositions of glass that affect the optical and thermal properties. Friedrich Siemens, who invented the tank furnace, was also very influential in making the mass production of glass possible. The tank furnace rapidly replaced the old pot furnace and allowed the continuous production of far greater quantities of molten glass.

The vastly expanded market demand for glass was also crucial for the creating the motivation for mass production in the first place. Numerous factors interacted with each other to bring about increased demand. As petroleum was discovered and kerosene lamps were invented, demand for glass lamps increased. In addition, bottles that were originally used mainly for whiskey were now demanded by the medicine and food packaging industries. Glass tableware also became increasingly common and more people began to use glass in their daily lives. Moreover, since coal became widely available during the Industrial Revolution, glass factories did not have to be built near forests. Fuel could be obtained anywhere, especially near major cities, that were also potentially the major markets, and brought to the clients in a fast and efficient manner.

One important point to note is that ‘factory-produced’ is not necessarily synonymous to ‘automatically-produced.’ Before automation, a lot of factory-produced glassware were handmade, with some help of machines. But by the end of the 19th century, the engineer Michael Owens invented an automatic bottle blowing machine, and similar machines soon followed in Europe. Such machines allowed for a completely human-less production process, which was much faster and cheaper. In the 20th century, machines such as the gob feeder and individual section machine (IS machine) were developed. Especially the IS machine became the most widely used glass production arrangement and both types of machines still form the basis of many automatic glass factories today.