A bottle is a portable container in various shapes and sizes that stores and transports liquids. It has a neck and mouth that can be sealed with an internal stopper, external bottle cap or closure, or by induction sealing. Bottles can be made of glass or other materials. They can be made to be translucent, opaque or transparent. Bottles can also be made with a wide variety of finishes and colors. A bottle is usually made of a rigid material, but some bottles are made of flexible plastics.
The definition of a bottle is a continuously evolving subject in scientific and general literature. Scientists have proposed many definitions over the years, ranging from very broad and intuitive to highly detailed and technical. The broad and intuitive definition of a bottle centers around the intuition that a non-equilibrium state of matter appears solid but continuously relaxes into a liquid. More technical definitions have been developed for people who want a more mathematically rigorous description of the phenomenon.
Glass makers have used a number of different techniques to produce the curved shoulder (or “shoulder”) on some types of wine bottles. These include “bourdon” bottles that are roughly straight sided with a curved shoulder, and “burgundy” bottles that have sides that taper down about 2/3 of the height to a short cylindrical section. These are arguably the most common types of wine bottles today.
Another method for producing a shoulder is by using a “codd-neck” bottle, which was invented by British soft drink maker Hiram Codd in 1872. These bottles enclose a marble in slot bet 200 the neck of the bottle, which is held by pressure created by the carbonation. The pressure of the carbonated liquid pushes the marble against a rubber washer/gasket in the neck of the bottle to form a seal.
A less common method for producing a shoulder is called “down-tooled” or “down-molded” (White, 1978). This refers to the appearance of a lower concavity in the base of a bottle. A down-molded base is much shallower than a push-up or kick-up base and is often a giveaway of a molded bottle rather than a cast-iron or wooden mold.
Other types of bottle manufacturing techniques have also been used to make a shoulder, including the use of a “block” (a wood or iron form with a groove for the blowpipe) in the hand-blown production process. This method results in a smoother shoulder than the slug plate technique. The finish on some bottles produced this way may have a distinct, somewhat fluted appearance that is called a “ball neck.” This finish is commonly found on hair dye, sauce, pickle and flavoring extract bottles from the 1875 to mid-1885 time period and is described in more detail on the Bottle Typology page.
