Ball Tapered Wide Mouth Half Pint Mason Jar

Ball's story begins in Buffalo, New York, in 1880, when brothers Frank and Edmund Ball bought the small Wooden Jacket Can Company with about $200 borrowed from their uncle. Their wood-jacketed tin containers held things like kerosene, paint and varnish, but the contents corroded the tin. That problem pushed the brothers to experiment with glass, and by the mid-1880s they were making sealed glass canning jars, just as the Mason Improved patent was due to expire.

A fire destroyed the Buffalo glassworks in the mid-1880s, and the brothers soon moved to Muncie, Indiana, drawn in large part by natural gas for glassmaking. The first glass at the Muncie works was made on March 1, 1888. From there Ball grew through its own machinery and many acquisitions of rival glass companies. In 1909 it bought Greenfield Fruit Jar & Bottle Co. to gain Owens automatic machine rights. Over the years the lettering on its jars changed again and again, from early monogram jars to the cursive Ball logo, Ball Blue, and Ball Perfect Mason.

The company became Ball Corporation in 1969. Its home-canning business was spun off as Alltrista in 1993, and Ball left glass containers by 1996. Today, new BALL-branded jars are sold under license by Newell Brands.