Bologna Bottle - Definitions and Related Excerpts From The 19th and 20th Centuries

Definitions and Related Excerpts From The 19th and 20th Centuries

excerpt from pg.124 of "A cyclopaedia of six thousand practical receipts, and collateral information in the arts manufactures, and trades including medicine, pharmacy, and domestic economy:... " by Arnold James Cooley pub. 1854

"BOLOGNA VIAL. The bologna, or philosophical vial, is a small vessel of glass which has been suddenly cooled, open at the upper end, and rounded at the bottom. It is made so thick at the bottom that it will bear a smart blow against a hard body without breaking; but if a little pebble, or piece of flint, is let fall into it, it immediately cracks, and the bottom falls into pieces; but unless the pebble or flint is large and angular enough to scratch the surface of the glass, it will not break."

excerpt from pg. 450 of "The new American cyclopædia, ed. by G. Ripley and C.A. Dana" by American Cyclopaedia pub. 1859

"BOLOGNA VIAL, a name given to rudely shaped flasks of glass, which, in making, are suddenly cooled without annealing. They are made to illustrate the peculiar effects of the annealing process."

excerpt from pg.110 of "Knight's American mechanical dictionary: ..." by Edward Henry Knight pub. 1876

"The Bologna vial is a rude flask of some three or four inches in length by about one in diameter, and from 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch in thickness.

If a leaden bullet lie dropped into it from a height of three or four feet, or it be struck a smart blow on the outside with a stick, it will not break, but the dropping of a grain of sand or a small sharp fragment of flint into it will cause it to crack and fall to pieces."

excerpt from pg.158 of "The Locomotive, Volume 6", by Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company pub. 1885

"The Bologna vial is simply a vial of any form whatever, made of any kind of glass, but much thicker at bottom than at top, and cooled immediately without annealing." ... "These glasses when they have received the first injury do not always crack immediately, but remain whole sometimes a few minutes, sometimes for hours, and then suddenly give way." ... "The peculiar brittleness of the Bologna vial is also removed by again heating and cooling slowly."

The gentleman who wrote these lines was under the impression it was the "stoutness" of the bottom of the glass that gave it such resilience, and seemed unaware from his definition that the inside or outside of the glass being quench cooled had any bearing on it.

Websters Dictionary 1913

"{Bologna vial}, a vial of unannealed glass which will fly into pieces when its surface is scratched by a hard body, as by dropping into it a fragment of flint; whereas a bullet may be dropped into it without injury."

excerpt from the Physics Department website on "Bologna Bottles" at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1996

"The Bologna Bottle has been heated and then the outside has been slowly cooled, rendering it hard enough to drive a nail into wood. The bottle's inside surface, however, has been rapidly cooled, maximizing internal stress. A mineral is used to scratch the inside surface of the bottle, at which, due to the internal stress, the entire bottle shatters."