The Past
It began in 1919 when Henry Ford recognized the almost unlimited potential of glass for windshields and for enclosing his Model Ts. Using a new process, Ford opened his first glass plant in Highland Park, MI in 1920, becoming the first American glass manufacturer to use a new continuous rolling method of making high volumes of flat glass. By 1923, more than 20 million square feet of glass were being produced annually and a second plant was built in Dearborn, MI. Expansion followed expansion and, by 1936, a million square feet of plate glass were being produced every week. Among the many innovations developed during these years was "safety sandwich" laminated glass for windshields. This safety item soon became the standard for the entire automotive industry.

In 1956, another plant was opened in Nashville, TN; at the time it was the largest glass manufacturing plant under one roof in the world. In 1966, the first float glass line was started in the Nashville Plant and a float line was installed in the Dearborn plant a year later. During the years that followed, the company added two more float lines at the Nashville plant and developed many innovations to the float glass manufacturing process.

In 1974, yet another float glass line was started at a new production facility in Tulsa, OK and a second float glass line began production in 1975. The Tulsa Glass Plant was built to primarily serve the architectural glass market and occupies almost 200 acres. The glass manufacturing building measures almost half a mile long and has almost 1,000,000 square feet of floor space (almost 23 acres). An automotive parts fabrication facility was opened in 1978 and has approximately 500,000 square feet of floor space.

The Present
Zeledyne continues to operate the plants in Nashville and Tulsa as well as an automotive parts fabrication facility in Juarez, Mexico. Zeledyne Float Glass Operations is a primary float glass manufacturer, supplying annealed float glass to our customer fabricators, who then perform any fabrication of the glass as required (cutting of glass to the proper size, heat treating, insulating glass, or laminating).

Zeledyne manufactures the Versalux™ line of colored and coated glass. Prior to adoption of the Versalux trade name, products were manufactured under the Sunglas trade name. Versalux architectural float glass is produced in seven different colors (two shades of blue, two shades of green, two shades of grey, and bronze). Two different reflective coatings are applied to the colored substrates to produce five blue products, five green products, three grey products, and two bronze products. Additional combinations are available by special order.

Orientation of the reflective coated surface in the finished state can provide additional design options. A #1 surface (reflective coating out) application results in increased reflectivity and a crisp mirror-like appearance. A more common usage is a #2 surface (reflective coating in) application, which allows the base color to be more apparent and provides lower reflectivity.

Our customers fabricate our glass into a variety of products such as windows, curtain walls, doors, entryways, skylights, bath and shower enclosures, interior partitions, shelving, tabletops, farm and construction equipment, and car, truck, RV, and boat windows.

The Tulsa Plant maintains the following certifications:

• ISO 9001 (achieved in 1996)
• QS9000 (achieved in 1997)
• ISO 14001 (achieved in 1998)