The following information is a light hearted and sometimes informative different perspective on glass!
Glass vitrification
A process called vitrification can turn Nuclear waste into glass blocks for long-term storage. Should you be rudely awakened in the night by heavy breathing and men surrounding your bed wearing rubber masks and waving 6-inch long tools at you, then it might be the search team from Sellafield looking for glass blocks incorrectly sold to your local bathroom supplier.
Model T glass windscreen
When the Model T Ford car was first introduced, the glass windscreen was an optional extra.
Sir Alastair Pilkington
Flat glass was harder to achieve before 1959 when Sir Alastair Pilkington (1920 – 1995) invented the float glass process. This is where molten glass is poured or floated across molten tin thereby giving its perfectly flat finish. The molten glass settles to a thickness of 6mm, which was lucky for Pilkingtons as most demand for glass at the time was for this thickness. He got the idea while washing up, which may seem a little hard to believe as men in the 1960’s were not known for housework! Apparently a plate floating on the water gave him the idea, maybe while he was playing battle ships instead of doing the dishes? It took 7 years to perfect the process and nearly ruined the Company.
Sir Alastair Pilkington was captured in Crete 1942 and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp. It is pure coincidence that he shares the same name as the company that employed him.
Before this process, glass was machined and ground to achieve the flat profile.
Full-scale production of float glass was not a smooth ride. The plant built to make the first ever float glass took 14 months to produce anything they could sell. Anticipating many years of non-stop production, the plant was closed for servicing but then took 4 months to restart (proof that if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it). Modern plants produce 1000 tonnes of glass a day and work non-stop for 15 years.
Revolutionary glass
Glass has been a major part in many revolutionary inventions. Had it not been for glass, we could be living in a World with no thermometers, televisions or light bulbs. You might have wished for glass to be un-invented should you have ever had a rectal temperature taken, forced to watch Big Brother live for a weekend or turned the light on to discover your pub conquest was gorgeous only minimal lighting conditions.
American safety glass
In America, the windscreen is actually classified as a safety device as it provides structural strength, assists the air bags and keeps occupants inside the car in the event of an accident. So always check your windscreen is working before crashing your car!
Windscreen glass
Did you know that if you take the windscreen out of your car, the wipers don’t work properly and humidity can rise exponentially when it’s raining?
Glass recycling
Help reduce the energy used to recycle glass by replacing your broken double-glazing with 2 layers of empty vodka bottles.
Origin of windows
Nobody really knows how glass windows come about, but it has been speculated that an ancient equivalent of an interior designer once looked at a section of wall surrounded by curtains and announced that it was “missing a certain something”.
Bullet proof glass
Bulletproof glass is made of several layers called laminating. In between the glass is a polycarbonate material that absorbs the energy of what has been fired at it. The thicker the glass, the higher impact it can withstand. There is even one-way bulletproof glass enabling the target victim to shoot back.
PC software
If glass had not been invented, windows would not have come about so what would your PC operating system be called?
For more information on specialist glass solutions please call us on 01484 647744
