Alastair Pilkington

Sir Lionel Alexander Bethune Pilkington OBE FRS (7 January 1920 – 5 May 1995), always known as Sir Alastair Pilkington, was a British engineer and businessman who invented and perfected the float glass process for commercial manufacturing of plate glass.

Born on 7 January 1920 in Calcutta, India, he was the son of Colonel Lionel George Pilkington MC (1889–1955) and his wife Evelyn Carnegie Bethune (1892–1985), sister of Sir Alexander Maitland Sharp Bethune, 10th Baronet. He was educated at Sherborne School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War Two. Joining the Royal Artillery, he was captured in the Battle of Crete and spent four years as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. Returning to university, he obtained an engineering degree, followed by a job with the glass manufacturers Pilkington Brothers. He was not related to the Pilkington family which then controlled the business.

In 1952 he invented the float glass process, in which molten glass was "floated" over a bath of molten tin and manipulated to achieve the required product thickness, and with his associate Kenneth Bickerstaff, spent seven years perfecting and patenting its commercially successful manufacture. American inventors had tried several times to achieve an improved and lower-cost process to replace the costly plate glass, but had not succeeded. His breakthrough enabled Pilkingtons to dominate the world market for high quality flat glass for many years. Starting in the early 1960s, all the world's leading flat glass manufacturers obtained licences to use the float glass process. From technical director of Pilkingtons in 1955, he became deputy charman in 1971 and chairman from 1973 until he reached retirement age in 1985. For the rest of his life he was the company's president.

In 1969 he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1970 a Knight Bachelor, as well as receiving the Wilhelm Exner Medal. In 1978 he was awarded the A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize and in 1983-4 served as President of the British Association.

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