In appearance,
this glass is difficult to distinguish from ordinary. And it expands when heated,
eight times smaller than ordinary glass. And that turned out to be enough to
make it really magical glass. A red-hot pyrex light bulb will not burst if it
is sprayed with cold water. A laboratory flask with boiling water can be safely
lowered into cold water - it will withstand it. Now you can boil the soup in a
glass pot and fry the steak in a glass pan. But pyrex has found its place not
only in the kitchen and laboratory.
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| Pyrex Casserole |
After all that
has been said, it will become clear why the Americans enclosed in a pyrex shell
a small parcel addressed to ... people of 6939.
The history of
this “parcel” is interesting. As you know, relatively few things have come down
to us from ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Rome; most of them were destroyed by
time. And so, in order to preserve for posterity the most valuable achievements
of their time, American scientists decided to put samples of various useful
objects in a special cylinder and bury this cylinder in the ground. But what
must this cylinder be made of? After all, it must be very durable. To survive
five millennia, he must not be afraid of either water or fire.
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| Old Gramophone |
Scientists
decided to make the cylinder double: the outer cylinder was made of stainless
steel and the inner one was made of pyrex glass. And in this glass cylinder,
there is a whole tiny museum: an encyclopedia, maps, and books printed on film
that can be read under a microscope (it is also attached here), a tiny sound
movie, a gramophone with records, an electric bulb, a razor and many, many
other things. On September 22, 1939, the cylinder was solemnly buried in the
ground to a depth of fifteen meters.
In all large
museums and libraries, there will be an exact plan, carved on metal, of the
location of this parcel. It is assumed that in five thousand years, future
historians will get the parcel addressed to them and learn about our time from
it.
