Richard Mead Atwater, Sr. (August 10, 1844 – 1922) was a chemist and public official in New Jersey and Pennsylvania involved in early scientific glass-making. Early years Atwater was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1844 into a Quaker family. His father, Stephen Atwater, was a civil engineer working on the Erie Canal, and later became the City Surveyor for Providence. His mother was Mary Weaver, who came from Hamilton, New York, the daughter of a Quaker minister. Atwater spent his first 21 years in Providence. Education Atwater lost his father at the age of 10. He was obliged to work and help his widowed mother carry on with her five children, getting up before dawn six days a week to fold and deliver newspapers. The work did not pay much but he learned the value of networking. He attended public school until he was 15, then attended the Friends Boarding School of Providence. After graduating, he taught for a term at a public school in Wakefield, Rhode Island, meeting local industrialist Roland Hazard, then moving on to teach at a local private school, where he met his future wife Abby Sophia Greene. He attended Brown University and graduated in 1865, and was made Quaker Trustee of Brown University in 1878. Immediately after graduating, he found employment in Millville, New Jersey as a tutor. He served a short term as Superintendent of Schools in Millville. Glass works Atwater was soon hired as Assistant Manager in the manufacture of scientific glassmaking at the Millville glassworks of Whitall Tatum Company. In 1874, he was appointed traveling agent and was responsible for writing many contracts, visiting all the large cities in the north of the US, and as far west as San Francisco. In 1876, attending the Centennial Exposition, he saw an exhibit of foreign-made chemical glassware. He took the prompt to devise and patent accurate methods for constructing graduated cylinders, as well as reagent bottles with an embossed ground label, which were widely used. He also patented a portable finishing furnace for making glassware, and a variety of patterns for dispensing bottles in general use. In 1889, wanting to enhance his career and give his children better opportunities for education, he moved Germantown, a section of Philadelphia, where he worked at the main office of the Whitall Tatum glassworks. Marriage, family life, and mayor Atwater married Abby Sophia Greene in 1867 in