I've heard about and watched videos about the float method of producing flat, plate glass in which molten glass is poured onto a river of molten tin. The tin cools the glass very slowly and allows the glass to cool perfectly flat and smooth resulting in plate glass that can effectively be infinitely long.
I've also heard about crown or table glass (click here and scroll down a bit) in which an inflated ball of glass was cut open and spun into a flat disk. The larger the disk could be spun, the larger the panels of mostly flat glass that could be cut from that disk. The panels would by necessity be thicker on one side (the side nearer to the center of the disk) than on the other.
Cylinder blown glass - as shown in the above video - requires a ball of glass with a bubble to be blown then swung into a longer and longer cylinder which is then cut open and laid flat to produce the flat pane of glass. The larger and longer the cylinder, the larger the pane of flat glass.
Float glass is much cheaper, but this cylinder glass process is far more fascinating to watch.
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