Many glass companies were drawn to the Toledo, Ohio area for a number of reasons: its natural gas; cheaper oil and coal than in the East; its near-central location to a network of railroads and steamship lines, and the quantities of sandstone with a high silica content, which made good quality glass.
Edward Drummond Libbey, a New England glassmaker, moved his Libbey Glass Company to Toledo. In the same year, he met and hired Michael J. Owens, whose inventive genius would revolutionize the glass industry.