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Thursday 9 April 2015

Glass

Glass is made of sand that is heated until it is liquid. When it is liquid, it is shaped and left to cool.

The first objects crafted entirely of glass were beads from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt dating from about 2500 BC.

The first glass vessels were in use in Egypt and Mesopotamia by 1500 BC.

The technique of glassblowing was developed in the last years of the 1st century BC, probably in Syria.

The term glass developed in the late Roman Empire. It was in the Roman glassmaking center at Trier, now in modern Germany, that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from a Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance.


Glass blowers in Bristol used to regularly eat snails to improve their blowing power.

China had invented ceramics for teacups so early and they were so satisfied with it, they never had any glass right up until the 19th century. This meant they didn’t have mirrors and windows etc, leaving them behind in sciences, as they didn’t make lenses and other things fundamental to science.

French chemist Édouard Bénédictus invented laminated safety glass in 1903 after a lab accident. A glass flask coated with the plastic cellulose nitrate was dropped, shattering but not breaking into pieces. In 1909 he filed a patent, after hearing of a car accident causing injury by glass debris.

The first building to be completely covered in glass, built for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, was completed in Toledo, Ohio on January 15, 1936. It marked a milestone in architectural design representative of the International style of architecture, which was at that time becoming increasingly popular in the US.


Several large glass companies have their origins in Toledo and the city is known as the Glass City because of its long history of innovation in all aspects of the glass industry.

In 1993, Toronto lawyer Garry Hoy died trying to prove that the glass in the windows of a 24th-floor office was unbreakable by throwing himself against it. It was an act he had done many times before. The windows didn’t break but the glass popped out of the frame and he plunged to his death.

Almost all the glass we use today is made using Alastair Pilkington’s "float" process, which made it far easier and cheaper to make high-quality glass.

Fritted glass is a special kind of glass with small opaque dots that ensures birds can see the glass while humans can see straight through it.

Glass can form naturally from supercooled volcanic magma.

The heat of a lightning bolt can turn sand into glass.

There's a planet called HD 189733b where it rains molten glass, sideways, at 4,350 MPH (7,000km/h). 

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