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The History Of Tempered Glass

Tempered glass has been known to us for some time. It is used in many daily applications and for a variety of uses. The first inventor of tempered glass will most likely forever remain anonymous. It is possible that tempered glass was first discovered by different cultures at the same time. There is documented evidence that suggests tempered glass was commonly used in many applications several hundred years ago.

Some historical evidence suggests the first form of tempered glass might have been in the 17th century. However, the people who used the glass at that time most likely had no appreciation of its increased strength, but no doubt they noticed that it would shatter into tiny pieces when broken. One such example of an early creation of tempered glass was for Prince Rupert’s Drops – molten glass was dropped into buckets of cold water to produce glass-shaped teardrops. Many people believe that those tear-shaped drops of glass are the earliest recorded examples of tempered glass.

Another belief is that the invention of the tempered glass process belongs to a French scientist named Frances de la Bastie, who experimented with glass extensively in 1874. His experiments involved heating, cooling, and then reheating the same piece of glass. The results he obtained led him to discover that reheated glass shatters into thousands of tiny pieces when broken instead of splintering into large, dangerous slivers of glass. Bastie realized the value of tempered glass, mainly because of its obvious safety benefits. Even though it appears that several different people shared the initial discovery of how to fabricate tempered glass, the first patent on the process of creating tempered glass was given to Rudolph A. Seiden, a chemist from Austria.

The mass production of tempered glass for use in automobiles came at a good time – auto makers began improving on their engine designs and pretty soon there were faster, more powerful cars on America’s highways. The faster the cars traveled, the greater the risk for passenger injury when the auto’s windows were broken in an accident.

While laminated glass had securely seated its position as the best type of glass for automobile windshields, tempered glass securely seated its position as the best type of glass to use for all other windows inside of an automobile. Between those two types of glass, auto passengers became very well protected from broken glass should an accident occur.

People often ask why laminated glass isn’t used for every window in an automobile. There are two reasons. First, laminated glass is much more expensive to manufacture, and would add substantially to the cost of the vehicle if it were used for every window. The second reason is that it is very difficult to break through a piece of laminated glass. In the event of an emergency, rescue crews need to be able to pull people out of the vehicle as quickly as possible, and tempered glass is much easier to break than laminated glass.

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