Chance Brothers

Chance Brothers and Company was a glassworks originally based in Spon Lane, Smethwick, West Midlands (formerly in Staffordshire), in England.

Robert Lucas Chance (8 October 1782 – 7 March 1865), known as 'Lucas', bought the British Crown Glass Company's works in Spon Lane in November 1822.

[1] The company ran into difficulty and its survival was guaranteed in 1832 by investment from Chance's brother, William (29 August 1788 – 8 February 1856) who owned an iron factoring business in Great Charles Street, Birmingham.

In 1848, under the supervision of Georges Bontemps, a French glassmaker from Choisy-le-Roi, who had purchased the secret of the stirrer after the deaths of Pierre Louis Guinand and Joseph von Fraunhofer, the pioneers of the manufacture of high-precision lenses for observatory telescopes,[3] a new plant was set up to manufacture crown and flint glass for lighthouse optics, telescopes and cameras.

At that time it was the only firm able to make the opal glass for the four faces of the Westminster Clock Tower which houses the famous bell, Big Ben.

[5] In 1870, Chance Brothers took over the failing Nailsea Glassworks in Somerset, but problems with coal supply led to the closure of that business.

[6] Elihu Burritt (1810–1879) the American philanthropist and social activist, once said about Chance, "In no other establishment in the world can one get such a full idea of the infinite uses which glass is made to serve as in these immense works.

[citation needed] In 1933, the company was reported to be involved in an attempt to contact "any intelligent life" on the planet Mars, using adapted lighthouse optics from a mountaintop, the Jungfrau, in Switzerland.

During world War II, the company was involved in production of cathode-ray tubes for early radar sets, making up to 7,000 per week.

Since then the company has continued to develop its range of products and processes, and areas now served include the pharmaceutical, chemical, metrology, electronics and lighting industries.

Another important innovation from Chance Brothers was the introduction of rotating optics, allowing adjacent lighthouses to be distinguished from each other by the number of times per revolution that the light flashes.

In about 1848, Chance was one of the first companies to produce very long pieces of window glass, following technology developed as a result of finding a solution for an order from Joseph Paxton for a large greenhouse on the Chatsworth estate of the Dukes of Devonshire.

Based on technology by Sir William Crookes, Chance Brothers was responsible for perfecting the manufacture of glass for the earliest optical lenses to block harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun while retaining transparency.

Chance's Glassworks, Spon Lane, Smethwick
Robert Lucas Chance – from a photograph
Portrait of Sir James Timmins Chance , by Joseph Gibbs , 1902 (possibly painted posthumously)
The transept façade of The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park , London
One of the dials of the Great Clock of Westminster, popularly known as Big Ben . (The minute hand is 14 feet (4.3 m) long.)
Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace. (1943) by Mervyn Peake (Art.IWM ART LD 2851)
Glass ashtray, from a design by Kenneth Townsend, part of the 'Sights of London' series (1970s)
'King of Hearts' ashtray, retaining its "Chance Glass-A member of the Pilkington Group" maker's sticker
Heceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon . The Chance Brothers Fresnel lens , built in the early 1890s, is still in operation at this historic light station.
An 85 mm Chance Brothers Incandescent Petroleum Vapour Installation which produced the light for the Sumburgh Head lighthouse until 1976. The lamp (made in approx. 1914) burned vaporized kerosene (paraffin); the vaporizer was heated by a denatured alcohol (methylated spirit) burner to light. When lit some of the vaporised fuel was diverted to a Bunsen burner to keep the vaporizer warm and the fuel in vapour form. The fuel was forced up to the lamp by air; the keepers had to pump the air container up every hour or so. This in turn pressurized the paraffin container to force the fuel to the lamp. The white cloth is an unburnt mantle on which the vapour burned.