Since 1970 Replacement Glass Co., Inc. has been dedicated to providing the unprecedented service you want with the products you need. This dedication to service and quality has made us Alaska's best glass company for 40 year's. Come visit us at our Anchorage store located on Arctic Blvd. at Fireweed Lane or at our Wasilla store at 2901 Bogard Rd. .
Some 2000 years ago, a group of Phoenician merchants used blocks of "natron", an alkali, to support their cooking pots over the fire while preparing dinner. When the fire burned out, they discovered a clear residue. This has been credited with being the first human-made glass.
The story has a nice imaginative appeal. However, it would not have been possible for the heat from the fire to fuse natron and sand into a glass-like substance. This would have required a temperature over 1100 degrees centigrade. What likely happened is that the sand in the region was, in fact, powdered obsidian -- natural glass. It would then have been possible for the heat from the fire, assisted by the fluxing action of the natron on the sandy particles, to produce a glass residue.
Glass containers for food, beverages, cosmetics and medicines have been with us a long time. Human-made glass is thought to be the oldest manufactured substance in the world. Archaeologists have found glass bottles and jars dating back to 1500 B.C.
Since then, glassmaking has had a long and fascinating development, right up to its present multitude of uses by artisans, craftspeople and manufacturing firms.
barrowed from http://www.glassworks.org
In The World Of High-Tech Glass
Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist...
Scientists
at NASA have developed a gun built specifically to launch dead chickens at the
windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling
collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.
British
engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshield of
their new high-speed trains. Arrangements were made to borrow the gun. But when
the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurtled out of the
barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it into smithereens,
crashed through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two, and
embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin.
Horrified
the Britain’s sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with
the designs of the windshield, and begged the U.S. scientists for suggestions.
NASA's
response was just one sentence:
Source unknown
