The eldest of six children, Clyde Tombaugh was born on a farm near Streator, Illinois. He attended high school in Streator and moved with his family to a farm in Western Kansas, where a hailstorm destroyed the family’s crops, dashing his hopes of attending college. Tombaugh continued to study on...

Because of the immediate availability of coal deposits and the nearby mining of silica sand, Streator became the ideal location for the production of glass products. In 1880, a window-glass manufacturing plant was established. When this enterprise demonstrated that glass could be produced...