Fifty years of glass making: 1869-1919
| Author(s): | Pittsburgh Macbeth-Evans Glass Company |
| Category: | Glass |
| Publisher: | Pittsburgh: Macbeth-Evans Glass company |
| Publish date: | Jan 1, 1920 |
| ISBN: | 0009900000076 |
| Number of pages: | 108 |
GLASS has been traced by history and tradi- tion to remote ages of the world. The time and place of its discovery will probably be never more than mere conjecture. Some writers would have us believe that "Tubal Cain," mentioned in Genesis 4:22 as "an instructor of every' artificer in brass and iron," was the inventor. Doubtless this opinion finds its chief basis in the theory that glass, the offspring of fire, was discovered shortly after its progenitor. Pliny, the Roman historian (23 A. D.— 79 A. D.), wrote a somewhat different version of the discovery of glass. This ancient writer, in his story, declares that the discovery was accidental. "It is said," wrote Pliny, "that some Phoenician merchants, hav- ing landed on the coast of Palestine, near the mouth of the river Belus, were preparing for their repast, and , not finding any stones on which to place their pots, took some cakes of nitre (bicarbonate of soda) from their cargo for that purpose. The nitre being thus submitted to the action of fire with the sand on the shore, they together produced transparent streams of an unknown fluid, and such was the origin of glass." There are many who have taken exception to Pliny's account of the discovery of glass, declaring it impossible to produce glass in the open air and under the conditions described.
