A mason jar

Glass canning jars, also known as fruit jars or Mason jars (named after its inventor John L. Mason) have been around since the early 1850s and today are eagerly sought after by collectors. There is a section on eBay devoted to the sale of antique fruit jars, some of which have sold for as high as $30,000. An earlier British jar is known as the Kilner jar. Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 400 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1600 × 2400 pixel, file size: 853 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 400 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1600 × 2400 pixel, file size: 853 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... John Landis Mason (1826 - February 1902) was a native of Philadelphia, a tinsmith and the patentee of the metal screw-on lid for fruit jars that have come to be known as Mason jars. ... // Production of steel revolutionized by invention of the Bessemer process Benjamin Silliman fractionates petroleum by distillation for the first time First transatlantic telegraph cable laid First safety elevator installed by Elisha Otis Railroads begin to supplant canals in the United States as a primary means of transporting goods. ... eBay headquarters in San Jose eBay North First Street satellite office campus (home to PayPal) eBay Inc. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... A Kilner jar from no later than 1928 The open jar A modern French Kilner jar A Kilner jar is a rubber-sealed, screw-topped jar used for the storage of food, which was invented by the Kilner family and produced by John Kilner & Co, Yorkshire, England. ...

The earliest glass jars were called wax sealers because they used sealing wax, which was poured into a channel around the lip which held on a tin lid. This process was complicated and error-prone, but was largely the only one available for a long time, and widely used even into the early 1900s. Letters sealed with sealing wax in a painting by Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts (1665). ... General Name, Symbol, Number tin, Sn, 50 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 14, 5, p Appearance silvery lustrous gray Standard atomic weight 118. ... // Public flight demonstration of an airplane by Alberto Santos-Dumont in Paris, November 12, 1906. ...

By far, though, the most popular form of seal was the screw-on zinc cap, the precursor to today's screw-on lids. The earliest successful application of this was discovered by Mason and patented on November 30, 1858, a date embossed on thousands of jars. Jars with "Patent Nov 30th 1858" were made in many shapes, sizes and colors well into the 1900s. They range in price from a few dollars to many thousands of dollars. Since they were made in such quantity and used for such long periods, many of them have survived to the present day, and the vast majority of them are sold for less than $10 despite often being more than 100 years old. Canners often use a two-piece lid consisting of a center portion used to seal the jar and a sealing ring, or figgler, to hold the center portion in place during sealing. General Name, Symbol, Number zinc, Zn, 30 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 12, 4, d Appearance bluish pale gray Standard atomic weight 65. ... November 30 is the 334th day of the year (335th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1858 (MDCCCLVIII) is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ...

Another popular closure is known to collectors as the lightning closure, named after the first jar to use it, which was embossed with "Lightning" on the side. More commonly, this is often known as a "bail" closure and consists of a metal wire that leverages a glass lid down when pressed against the side of the jar.

The heyday for jars was probably 1860-1900, when an explosion of patents for various closures were issued, ranging from the effective to the absurd. The more absurd closures were quickly abandoned and often fetch high prices in today's market.

Often, though, what jar collectors today most often look for is great color in a jar, and there are reproduction jars in "fantasy" colors or jars which have been irradiated to bring out colors not original to the jar. About 99% of all jars are in some shade of aqua or clear so these are not normally sought-after colors (although there are a few exceptions). More rarely, jars will turn up in amber and occasionally in darker shades of green. Rarer still are cobalt blues, blacks and milk glass jars, and there is no known existence of any deep red antique jar. However, rare jars still pop up out of the woodwork. A collector recently acquired a cobalt blue jar that had been the subject of rumors for a long time but never seen before.

External links

• A primer on jars
• A collector's web site
• Darrell's Fruit Jar Page
• Nick's Fruit Jar page - lots of Ball jars
• Home brewing with mason jars
• Marsell's web page

The elephant jumped over a fence and broke a jar.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!