# Armstrong No Deposit No Return bottle?



## Jet Coaster Fan (Dec 31, 2010)

I found this amber 1970s beer bottle that says Not To Be Refilled, No Deposit No Return on the shoulder of this bottle. On the bottom is has the word Armstrong with the letter A in a circle. Under that is the number 13   7.  It is 7 1/2 inches tall and Over 2 1/2 inches wide.
 It has a throwaway pop top lip.  What do you know about this bottle? Ts is common or sorta rare?


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## Poison_Us (Dec 31, 2010)

[font="sans-serif, arial, helvetica, geneva"]Welcome!

 A  in a circle.........Armstrong Cork Company (Glass Division), Lancaster,  PA;  Millville, NJ [former Whitall Tatum Co. plant] ; Dunkirk, IN  [former Hart Glass Mnfg Co.  plant]. Mark was used from 1938-1969 on bottles and insulators. If  there is a line underneath the "circled A", this indicates the bottle  was produced at the Dunkirk plant.

  So, it's pre 70s, but the crown top was used for decades prior to 1970,  so it could be of any age during the the time span listed.  Now, someone  more into beers and such may be able to narrow it down further with the  NDNR notation..  that has it's own lifespan of which I am not familiar.[/font]


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## Jet Coaster Fan (Dec 31, 2010)

This has the whole acutal name 'Armstrong' written out in script, not just the A in a circle.


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## Poison_Us (Dec 31, 2010)

Armstrong is the bottle maker, not necessarily the brewery.  This would have had a paper label on it stating what it's contents were and who made it.  Without that label, this bottle could have been used by anyone.  So all we have to go by is the bottle maker, being Armstrong.  I have no idea how rare they are as they are not my area of collecting.  Someone else will have to assist you on the remaining details.

 Good resources to find more details on such bottles would be:

 http://www.sodasandbeers.com/
 &
 http://www.sha.org/bottle/


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## surfaceone (Jan 1, 2011)

> I found this amber 1970s beer bottle that says Not To Be Refilled, No Deposit No Return on the shoulder of this bottle. On the bottom is has the word Armstrong with the letter A in a circle. Under that is the number 13   7.  It is 7 1/2 inches tall and Over 2 1/2 inches wide.
> It has a throwaway pop top lip.  What do you know about this bottle? Ts is common or sorta rare?


 


> This has the whole acutal name 'Armstrong' written out in script, not just the A in a circle.


 
 Happy New Year Jet,

 Stephen is giving you the straight cork, so to speak. Your bottle is a tad too newish to be collectible, given another hundred years or so, and it might be ok. This is not to say that it is without history, and a pretty nifty one at that.







 It all started with this guy, Thomas Armstrong. "The Armstrong experience stretches over more than half the life of the Republic; few American business enterprises have endured as long, or with such continuing success.
 When it all began in a tiny two-man cork-cutting shop in 1860 in Pittsburgh, our national frontier barely reached beyond the western mountain ranges. Thomas Armstrong's first deliveries of hand-carved corks were by wheelbarrow...

 In the company's early days, Thomas Armstrong, the son of ordinary Scotch-Irish immigrants from Londonderry, steered his struggling company through the Civil War, financial panics, disastrous factory fires and a cutthroat marketplace...

 He was a brand-name pioneer, too, stamping "Armstrong" on each cork as early as 1864. And soon he was tucking a written guarantee into the burlap sacks of cork shipped from a big new factory on a Pittsburgh riverbank." From Armstrong.

 Armstrong made a myriad of products, still do. "Originated as Cork-Cutting Shop
 In 1860 Thomas Morton Armstrong, a 24-year-old son of Scottish-Irish immigrants from Londonderry, Ireland, used $300 of savings from his job as a shipping clerk to buy a small cork-cutting shop in Pittsburgh. The firm was originally named for his partner in the venture, John O. Glass, but Glass's interest was purchased by Armstrong's brother in 1864 and the company's name was changed to Armstrong, Brother & Company.
 Armstrong's original business was cutting cork stoppers, first by hand then after 1862 by machine, from the bark of cork trees which grow in Portugal, Spain, and northern Africa. During the Civil War, 1861 to 1865, the company made bottle stoppers for the Union Army and was singled out for official praise for fulfilling its contracts at the agreed prices with top-grade corks. This good publicity enabled Armstrong to land a large contract with a New York drug firm after the war, beginning the move toward national distribution of its products. In 1864 Thomas Armstrong pioneered the concept of brand-name recognition in his industry by stamping "Armstrong" on each cork and offering a written guarantee of quality with each sale.
 Originally cork was purchased from American importers, but in 1878 Armstrong made arrangements to purchase, process, and ship corkwood and corks direct from Spain, thus beginning the foreign operations that eventually would make the company the largest cork processor in Spain. By the 1890s Armstrong was the world's largest cork company, employing more than 750 people, most of whom Thomas Armstrong knew by name. In 1891 the company incorporated as Armstrong, Brother & Company, Inc. and, in 1893, purchased the Lancaster Cork Works, beginning its long involvement with the Pennsylvania Dutch area. During the 1890s Armstrong expanded its cork product line to include insulation, cork-board, gaskets, and flexible coverings for machinery. In addition, foreign markets were expanded with sales offices opening in Montreal and Toronto in 1895. In that year the corporate name was changed to Armstrong Cork Company. Thomas Armstrong died in 1908 and was succeeded as president by his son, Charles Dickey Armstrong.
 Expanded into Linoleum Floor Coveringin Early 20th Century
 Searching for new cork-based products, the company decided to add linoleum floor covering to its line and, in 1908, the first Armstrong linoleum was produced in a new plant in Lancaster. Invented in England in 1863 by Frederick Walton, linoleum was basically a mixture of cork flour, mineral fillers, and linseed oil, which was pressed under high temperature onto burlap backing and colored with pigments. The linoleum line was the beginning of the company's involvement with floor products, which by the 1990s, in a variety of modern forms, provided about half of its sales volume.
 Under Charles Armstrong's leadership the firm expanded its product lines with cork insulating board and other insulating materials, packaging closures, and gaskets, as well as linoleum and related flooring materials, becoming in the process a much more consumer-oriented company than before. He also continued his father's policy of responsibility towards his employees by initiating benefits that were rare, if not unprecedented, early in this century. In 1909 he established free dental service for employees. Other pioneering examples of corporate responsibility followed: extra pay for overtime in 1913, shop committees to communicate with management in 1919, paid vacations in 1924, and group life insurance in 1931. Armstrong was one of the first U.S. companies to provide such fringe benefits as pensions and group medical insurance. Thus Charles Armstrong's presidency expressed the company's philosophy that employees should be provided for voluntarily by industry rather than by means of government compulsion.
 Charles Armstrong became chairman of the board in 1928 and the next year John J. Evans succeeded him as president. In 1934, the vice-president, Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., who was to have a great impact on the company's development, became the next president of Armstrong.
 Marketing Innovations Boosted Sales in the 1910s and 1920s
 Prentis had joined the firm in 1907 when, as a 23-year-old with an M.A. in economics, he took a job with Armstrong's insulation division in Pittsburgh in order to gain some practical experience before beginning a teaching career. It was a significant hiring decision. Prentis became interested in the possibilities of advertising and public relations. He wrote the first promotional literature on cork products to be published by Armstrong, including selling aids for retailers and booklets on home decoration for consumers. In 1911 he became head of the tiny advertising department and persuaded management to support a three-year, $50,000 advertising campaign. In 1917 he arranged for the company's first national advertisement in the mass media, to appear in the September 1917 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. He pioneered his industry's recruitment of college graduates as salesmen and, with Charles Armstrong's support, helped develop the strenuous training programs that enormously strengthened company management. He improved distribution practices by initiating price lists with discounts based on quantities purchased, and insisted on the establishment of close, friendly relations with wholesalers and retailers.
 Thanks largely to Prentis's marketing innovations, Armstrong grew substantially during the 1920s, reaching nearly $48 million in sales by 1929, when the company moved its headquarters from Pittsburgh to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When the Great Depression cut sales in half and produced large losses by 1934, Prentis was appointed president to improve the company's situation. He diversified by purchasing rubber- and asphalt-tile factories, and in 1938 acquired two glass companies, Whitall Tatum and Hart Glass Manufacturing.
 The company's personnel policies helped to maintain morale and loyalty during those hard times. One example was the research employee who was laid off because of the Great Depression but continued to come to work without pay and, eventually rehired, made significant contributions to the development of a new flooring process. With Armstrong's debt-free balance sheet, Prentis's efforts were successful. By 1935 dividends on the common stock were restored and in 1936 Armstrong had its most profitable year to that point, a stunning achievement at a time when the country was still in the grip of the Great Depression. By 1937 the common stock had climbed from a low of $3.25 in 1932 to a price of approximately $65.
 In addition to improving Armstrong's profitability, Prentis became much more of a public figure than his predecessors. He spoke frequently on behalf of conservative business philosophies in opposition to the New Deal policies of the Roosevelt administration. He served as director of the United States Chamber of Commerce and as president of the National Association of Manufacturers. When World War II began, Prentis organized Armstrong's conversion to war production, including the establishment of a munitions division. In 1942 and 1943 he served as deputy director of the War Production Board for the Philadelphia region, becoming an employee of the government administration he had so frequently criticized.
 Postwar Emphasis on Product Innovation..." From.

 Here's some of that advertising from 1944 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	


From.

 You could read the book  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	


Ova Here.

 Stay at the hotel 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	


over there.

 Armstrong bought one of my favorite old time glass manufacturers Whitall Tatum. 

 "ARMSTRONG CORK CO.
 TO BUY GLASS PLANT

   LANCASTER Pa., April 2--Armstrong Cork Co has agreed to purchase the Whitall-Tatum Co of Millvale (sic) and Keyport, N. J. rounding out the company's closure division, it was announced today.
   The New Jersey company, employing 700 workers, produces an extensive line of glass containers, graduates, glass insulators, glass specialties and rubber sundries for the retail drug trade. It will enable Armstrong to offer the trade a complete glass package service.
   Whitall-Tatum has been in business for more than a century, having been founded by the late John M. Whitall and Edward Tatum in the early days of the last century.
   The deal is to be consummated June 20, 1938, subject to an audit of the Whitall-Tatum books and the approval of Armstrong stockholders of the company's plans for financing the purchase.
   Armstrong Cork Co proposes the creation of 60,000 shares of 4 per cent cumulative preferred stock, par value $100. and an increase in authorized common stock from 1,524,893 to 1,624,493 shares.

 Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA) April 2, 1938
 _______________________________________________________________________________________

 The Lee Glass plant, which was founded by James Lee in 1806 on the eastern bank of the Maurice River, spurred Millville's growth. Lee later sold the factory to Whitall Tatum. It was taken over by Armstrong Cork Company in 1939, then by Kerr Glass, Foster Forbes, and American Can. The plant closed in 1999 after 142 years of operation. At that time it was the oldest working glass plant in the nation." Thanks Tod.

 But let's get back to yer bottle. Youse could geocach it right here. 






 Or, buy a brownfield condo.

 Collectiblewise, you'd probably rather have an insulator 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 nowadays. You could always recycle...

 Ooops, almost forgot, the only Armstrong beer I could find was this one. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 which I pretty much think ain't the cervesa you were hoping for.






 "Cork Manufacturing at Armstrong Cork Co., Pittsburgh, PA, 1909"






 "Female Workers at Armstrong Cork Co. 1909"









 Thanks to Kaufman Mercantile.


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## Jet Coaster Fan (Jan 1, 2011)

I do have a Armstrong glass insulator though.  It has the lettering "Armstrong'N22"  "Made In U.S.A. A in a circle 16  54." 
 I think this insulator is from 1954.


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