ABSTRACT
The glass industry is a remarkable example of technological flows in opposite directions between England and France in the eighteenth century. The English glass industry had, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, been indebted to, and heavily dependent upon, inflows of continental technology. While Ravenhead was dependent on a basic French technology for casting, it had developed a new technology for the grinding and polishing of glass, and it was only there that it had a superiority to French production. The technological exchanges between England and France in the plate glass industry are complex, but quite fascinating. Flint glass presented much greater problems; few French attempts to acquire it from Britain met with much success, the one that was fairly successful required a remarkable effort in industrial espionage. In the instance of bottle glass the product was unsophisticated and the tolerances in the techniques of manufacture fairly slack.
