Shot Glass from America's Packard Museum

About the Shot Glass

As far as historians can tell, the earliest written reference came in 1913, in the book A History of Cass County Indiana from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. In the book, the author, Dr. Jehu Z. Powell depicts a story from roughly 1857, in which townspeople protested a man attempting to open a saloon. When the barkeeper received his first barrel of whiskey, an angry townsperson shot a hole through it, immediately draining it of its contents. In the words of Powell, “The remedy was effectual, and the saloon was not opened, and ever after, when the boys wanted a drink they would ask for a ‘shot of redeye’.”

Though the term “shot glass” was not attached to the earliest iterations, the 1800s were littered with references to tiny glass receptacles used for holding whiskey. Many of these early versions of the shot glass had relatively thin glass; the thick glass models that we see today weren’t common until after prohibition. While shot glasses from the 19th and early 20th century existed, they are extremely rare today. It wasn’t until many years after prohibition that shot glasses actually became popular. A few years after the Great Depression ended, and commercial manufacturing took off once more, the shot glass began to become a common item. As such, it is incredibly difficult to find shot glasses from before the 1940s, and those that can be found are usually quite valuable. CREDIT: abarabove.com