Legend of the Gathers

A child is always the first to appear. A few more materializing each day. Mysterious phantom folk. Protectors of the Light. Their true names lost, if they were ever really known at all.

We call them The Gathers.

Boys, girls, men, women—that golden glow oozing through their veins—bound together by the flame. By the fire. By the light they helped create . . .

There is often an element of truth to every legend. An element of historical fact to every fantastical tale. An element of mystery, as well. And wonder!

The Legend of the Gathers is no different in this regards.

An Historic Event

The Legend is a mash-up, if you will, of genuine, bona fide historical happenings and a dab of creative supernatural embellishment. First, the history.

You might think a Fortune 300 company like Corning Incorporated, one of the world’s premiere innovators in glass science and technology, has always been successful. You’d be wrong.

After the glass company first moved from Brooklyn to the small town of Corning in 1868, it specialized in making exceptional glass that was primarily used by engravers to fashion exquisite cut glass objects.  The sort of intricate and spectacular items folks have on display these days. Collectible pieces.

While engravers like John Hoare and T.G. Hawkes put Corning (the town and the glass factory) on the map for their magnificent cut glass, helping earn the town the moniker America’s Crystal City, the company struggled. After all, cut glass was a luxury item. If the community (and the company) were to survive, let alone thrive as they do today, they needed products that appealed to the masses.

It wasn’t until 1877 that another avenue presented itself as the company began making signal lamps for the railroad. Then, a couple years later, everything changed.

It’s Kind of a Big Deal

For a struggling glass company, the chance to create something for young inventor Thomas Edison (he was only 33 years-old at the time) was more than likely perceived as merely another job opportunity. One that was certainly welcome, but the future significance of this particular undertaking was probably not at the front of anyone’s mind. Aside, perhaps, from the inventor.

That there is no documentation around some of the particulars of this event suggest as much. Of course, the subsequent ambiguity also lends itself quite wonderfully to the mystery behind The Legend!

The year Brooklyn Flint Glass moved from Brooklyn to Corning (1868) was the same year then twenty-one-year-old Edison patented his first invention. Just over a decade later, in 1879, Edison received the first of two patents for developing a special filament through which he passed an electrical current creating incandescent light. What we call today, the lightbulb.

Edison wasn’t the first person to invent lighting, but his filaments allowed the illumination to last longer which meant it had greater potential for a broader application of uses. It was something that might be useful to more people.

Still, Edison needed special glass to house the filaments which got quite hot. Regular window glass or glass jars wouldn’t suffice.

Enter Corning Flint Glass Works.

It seems Edison reached out to the glass company to make those early bulbs. At first, the bulbs were made by hand and it was a slow process. The first day, 165 glass blanks were made and it took all day. On November 17, 1880, Corning sent 307 dozen bulbs to Edison and in the first year, Corning made 3,684 bulbs for Edison.

Less than fifty years later, Corning’s role in sharing light with the rest of the world would change again when William J. Woods, a former glassblower, and his colleague David E. Gray, an engineer, invented the high-speed ribbon machine which created 400,000 bulb blanks in a 24-hour period.

(check out Corning Inc’s historic video)

As a result of this mass production, glass bulbs became more affordable, allowing electric light into homes around the globe.

This aspect of the historic story isn’t something most folks learn about in school. But for a small town built around the culture of glass, the event was profound.

It established, for one thing, that the versatile material was a viable resource to be used for creating a variety of functional items (not just collectible art), objects that have become such ubiquitous and indelible parts of our everyday lives that we tend to take them and the glass from which they’re made for granted.

While this point in history—where the story of glass and the story of light intersect—is at the heart of The Legend of the Gathers, there’s still one significant element missing. The mystery!

Learn about the mystery here.

More historical facts taken from The Generations of Corning: The Life and Times of a Global Corporation by Davis Dyer and Daniel Gross:

• James and Joseph Lear came to Corning from Brooklyn when the company moved.
• October 21 1879 Edison produces first successful incandescent electric light – a filament that sustained a brilliant light when heated by electric current.

• In 1879, a 32-year-old inventor named Thomas Edison approached Corning with his idea for the lightbulb. He needed just the right glass to encase the delicate filaments that comprised the lightbulb; glass that was stronger and more damage-resistant than glass typically used in windows and jars. By 1880, Edison had designated Corning as his sole supplier of the glass bulbs he needed to bring light to the wider world.

• At that time, bulbs are made by hand, one piece at a time. A skilled craftsman can produce several hundred bulbs a day. Later, Corning would develop a new manufacturing process that would mass produce these bulbs, making Edison’s electric lamp more affordable to the masses.