Identify thin-walled round-bottomed with external turned lip

[sdean7855]

About 3 and a half-4" long. See the picture.

Found in an old overgrown dump in a park near my house in upstate NY

 

[CanadianBottles]

That's a strange one, never seen anything like it before. Maybe some sort of laboratory equipment?

 

[sdean7855]

Seems unlikely....the dump site looks like one of those personal, over the fence dump in a rural area maybe 10 miles north of the Kingston Rhiecliff bridge, thus 100 miles north of NYC

 

[sdean7855]

I have to think of it as a relative recent piece of glass given that it is very thinwalled...it feels somewhat more substantial than an egg, which isn't saying much. You could crush it with your bare hand...the thiness and that perfectly rolled external lip argue for early or mid 20th century..
I was wondering if it might be this, which was an Owen-Illinois idea that never went into production.
"What they had in mind was an ideal bottle: one that when formed symmetrically ... like a light bulb, with a narrow opening, thin side walls and a rounded bottom. " But how it could have ended up here is beyond me.

 

[bottle-bud]

From a 1906 Illinois Glass Company catalogue, looks like it could possibly be a show bottle.
What is a show bottle used for? Trying to find out!

 

[sdean7855]

An Oxford online dictionary has: "historical

• A large glass bottle filled with coloured liquid and displayed in a pharmacist's window." Early 19th century

 

[CanadianBottles]

Oh I think I know what it might be. It's just the right size, thickness, and shape to be a vacuum tube with the base missing. Look at the base under the light at different angles. Does it look like there was ever anything printed there?

 

[sdean7855]

I doubt it CanadianBottles, It'd be a very big vacuum tube if so, and anyway, vacuum tube glass doesn't neck down like this

 

[Harry Pristis]

I don't think it's a show bottle. My examples are not thin-walled, and they have a simple foot.

 

[CanadianBottles]

Actually I think you're right that it's not a vacuum tube. Four inches is a pretty standard size for the tubes that were used in radios back in the first half of the 20th century, but what I didn't realize is that the glass was totally sealed off to create the vacuum, with wires running through the glass walls. I also don't think it's a display bottle, it seems too delicate for that. I'm really back at square one of having no clue what this thing was used for. I have a feeling that it's part of something larger rather than being an actual bottle, but no clue what it would have been part of.