About
Glass — an amorphous solid (technically a supercooled liquid that never crystallizes) made primarily from silica (SiO2) — has been produced by humans for approximately 5,000 years (the oldest manufactured glass objects are Egyptian beads, c. 3500 BCE) and has been fundamental to science, architecture, communication, and everyday life. Ancient Rome developed flat window glass (though cloudy and thick); medieval Europe rediscovered glass and produced stained glass windows; the Venetian glass industry (island of Murano, protected monopoly from 1291) produced the clearest glass in Europe for centuries.
Key innovations: optical glass (17th century) enabled telescopes (Galileo, 1609) and microscopes, making possible the scientific revolution; plate glass (1688 Pilkington process, later 20th-century float glass) produced architectural glass windows; optical fibers (1970s, Corning Glass) now carry 95% of the world's internet traffic as pulses of light; and Gorilla Glass (Corning, 2007) provides the scratch-resistant screens of 1.5 billion smartphones. Laboratory glass (borosilicate, Pyrex) withstands thermal shock, enabling the chemical and biological research that produced most modern medicine. The James Webb Space Telescope's 18 hexagonal mirrors are coated with 48.2 grams of gold deposited atom by atom to create perfect infrared reflectors.
# Top 10 glass facts
- 15,000 year history
- 2Egyptian beads (3500 BCE)
- 3Murano Venetian glass (monopoly 1291-18th century)
- 4Galileo telescope (1609, changed science)
- 5float glass process (Pilkington, 1959)
- 6optical fiber (1970s, internet backbone)
- 7Gorilla Glass (smartphones)
- 8borosilicate (Pyrex, lab glass)
- 9glass recycling
- 10Stained glass theology
Fascinating Facts
- ◆Optical fiber cables carry 95% of the world's internet traffic as pulses of light traveling at 200,000 km/second — the signals travel from New York to London (5,570 km) in 28 milliseconds — and the transatlantic cable network (first laid 1858) is one of the most critical infrastructure systems on Earth
- ◆The Murano glass masters of Venice were so valuable — and the secret of clear glass so commercially important — that they were given extraordinary privileges (could marry noble Venetian women, their children were born noble) but were also effectively prisoners; leaving Venice was considered treason and families of escaped glassblowers were imprisoned or threatened with death
- ◆Gorilla Glass (Corning, 2007) was the result of a technology Corning had developed in the 1960s and shelved as having no commercial application; when Steve Jobs insisted on a glass phone screen for the iPhone and called Corning's CEO, the company rediscovered and commercialized the 40-year-old technology in 6 months
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