Safety glass was
accidentally invented by Edouard Benedictus, a French chemist. In 1903 he
dropped a flask of nitrocellulose. To his surprise, the glass did not shatter
into fragments but only slightly cracked. So Benedictus unwittingly realized
the idea of frontal auto glass.
The first
bulletproof glass was installed in 1941 in the windows of the Oval Office of
the White House USA.
 |
| Armored Glass |
Why doesn’t a car
windshield crumble to pieces when trying to smash it? It's simple. As in the
case of armored glass, a special film is superimposed on the windscreen that
prevents the cracked glass from flying into pieces. This invention is widely
used in automobiles, significantly reducing the risk of injury from broken
glass during accidents.
The thickest
glass in the world is used in the Sydney Aquarium. Its thickness is 26
centimeters and the screen size is 7 by 4 meters. However, for larger
aquariums, acrylic panels are used. The largest acrylic panel listed in the
Guinness Book of Records, installed in an aquarium in Dubai and has a size of 8
by 32 meters and a thickness of 75 centimeters.
 |
| Ancient Egyptian Beads |
The oldest model of glassmaking is a greenish bead with a diameter of 9 mm, found by Flinders
Petrie in Egypt near Thebes. According to scientists, its age is about five and
a half thousand years. It
is stored in the Berlin Museum.
