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This three-part series covers Ryan Root’s work at the Wellsboro Glass Plant, returning home of the S 1 and Number 9 ribbon machines, and the creation of the Wellsboro Glass Historical Association.

Part One shows Ryan following his grandfather’s footsteps into the same line of work. Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb in 1879 (Will Woods’s birth). Edison contacted Corning Glass to manufacture the light bulbs. At first, they were being done by hand, a long process of making two bulbs per minute in 1890’s. Corning Glass Inventor Will Woods and developer David Gray created the first ribbon machine to produce light bulbs. The Corning Ribbon Machines were installed in the Wellsboro plant in 1926. Grandpa Elihu Root and Grandfather Elvin Boyden both had the opportunity to work on these machines. (More history about the ribbon machines in our next broadcast’s writing.)

Ryan was born and raised in Wellsboro and graduated high school in 1999. His time at the Wellsboro Glass Plant began in November 2002, and he worked there until the plant closed in August 2016. Before Ryan started working at the plant in 1981, Corning sold to Osram Sylvania, and the ‘Ribbon Machines continued until 2016, when Osram Sylvania closed the plant.

Ryan worked different jobs at the glass factory and became one of their ribbon machine mechanics doing shift work. The S 1 ribbon machine was built here in Wellsboro in 1947 and sold to England. 1982, the machine was brought back, rebuilt, and put back into production. Over the years as a shift mechanic, it was challenging having the shift times change from 6 am to 2 pm, the following week from 2 pm to 10 pm, and the next week from 10 pm to 6 am. His responsibility was to keep the machines running! When three ribbon machines ran, they produced 3,000 bulbs a minute, quite a change from the original two bulbs per minute in the 1890’s. Ryan showed great perseverance and long-suffering during the shift-changing times. Every few years, the mechanics would rebuild the entire machines.

He also became the head mechanic of the glassing department while he was still a Ribbon Machine Mechanic.

When the plant closed in 2016, his expertise was still needed, so they sent him to another plant in Versailles, Kentucky. So Ryan, his wife Erin, and their three sons began a new adventure with the famous ribbon machines in Kentucky. That job lasted until 2018, when that plant closed.

He returned home with his family to Wellsboro, where he owns and runs his own business and is still passionate about ribbon machines!

Part two is coming up soon, sharing the story of Ryan’s Facebook post and the return of what the American Society of Mechanical Engineers calls the 10th International Mechanical Engineering Landmark: The Ribbon Machines to Wellsboro.