1) Glass Works: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future: How a “botched experiment” in 1952 and a series of failed business plans, plus a litlte Steve Jobs kismet, led to Gorilla glass. (via Wired)
2) Why Curved Glass Will Change Gadget Design Forever: “…The production technique behind 3-D shaped Gorilla Glass allows for glass that can bend as much as 75 to 80 degrees without breaking, as well as be molded into dramatic new shapes. And that’s a big deal, because it heralds the end of the age of the rectangle…” 3) Corning Museum of Glass: Yes. Go. An amazing resource to learn about the history, technology and art of glass. For those not in Corning, NY, there are online demos and a really tasty e-gift shop. (website) 4) Museo del Vetro: Currently under renovation until the middle of 2014, the Glass Museum on the Venetian island of Murano is still very much worth a visit.. Art, craft and technological brilliance will inspire. (website) 5) History of Glass: From arrowheads to Mesopotamia to the Chrystal Palace, glass has been a defining material of civilization. (via Wikipedia) 6) Bullseye Glass Company: A Portland-based manufacturer of art glass for glass art founded 30 years ago by “three hippie glassblowers.” They specialize in glass that can fused in a kiln. (website) 7) Bullseye Kiln-glass Education Online Trailer: Click through to the Bullseye YouTube channel for dozens of how-to videos. 8) You can now 3D print in glass with Shapeways: The process has several steps, including a session in a kiln, but shapes previously difficult to imagine in glass are now possible. (via Shapeways blog / video)
9) Glass Art Society: International organization “to promote the appreciation and development of the glass arts. 2014 Conference in Chicago. (website) 10) Glass Beach, Fort Bragg, California: Bottles tossed into a now-closed garbage dump and tumbled by oceans waves create a glittery beach. (Wikipedia) 11) Stained Glass That Doubles As A Solar Power Source: "Lux Gloria," an installation in a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan church by artist Sarah Hall, generates 2,500 kw hours of power per year and is tied into the grid. (via PopSci)
12) Onyx Building Integrated Photovoltaics: Spanish company (with an office in NY) specializes in working with architects to creates photovoltaic arrays that become a part of structure rather than an add-on. Arrays available with both clear and colored glass (website). Also, check out the blog. 13) Onyx Solar Corporate Video (English): "…Isn’t it extraordinary that an installation just 10 meters square can over the course of a single year generate enough electricity to power an electric car for more than 10,000 kilometers" Well, yes, it is… (stay with it for the solar array inspired by Piet Mondrian’s mosaic paintings about 2/3s of the way through) 14) ArchiExpo: Thermal insulation glass: Browse away. Glass that’s just glass just isn’t enough any more… (via ArchiExpo e-magazine)
15) Peek-A-Boo, We See You! Top Crystal-Clear Glass Buildings: An eye-candy round-up of glass buildings and homes (via Architizer) 16) Amazing Glass: 15 Creative Uses of Glass in Architecture: More glass architecture (via The Coolist) 17) What is Scientific Glassblowing? "…For centuries the knowledge and art of scientific glassblowers have been integral to the development of chemical, pharmaceutical, electronic and physics research. Some notable examples include Galileo’s thermometer, Edison’s light bulb, and the vacuum tubes of early radio, TV and computers." (via The American Scientific Glassblowers Society) 18) The invention of spectacles: Count on the Brits for an exhaustive article on the origin of eyeglasses. But, of course it took Ben Franklin’s Yankeen ingenuity to come up with bifocals… (via Royal College of Optometrists website) 19) Specs appeal: German physics teacher brings affordable glasses to Rwanda. Brilliant. A machine that can produce thousands of pairs of eyeglasses at a cost of less than a dollar per. Also, Siemens-Stiftung site entry. 20) History of the Microscope: Several decades after Dutch spectacle-makers experimented with combining lenses in a tube in the 1590s, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a draper by profession,started grinding his own lenses and seriously exploring the world the small. (via History to the Microscope website) 21) Who Invented the Telescope? Technically, it was a Dutchman who filed the first patent, but Galileo—who built his own—was the first to focus on the stars. (via Space.com) 22) How To Make A Telescope Lens - The Story Of Science: For all you DIY Makers out there, this one’s for you. “…”This joining of the skills of scholars and craftsmen was key to the emerging power of European science.” (via BBC / video) 23) Why is Glass Transparent?: The physics of glass explained in a TED Ed video by materials scientist Mark Miodownik, author of Stuff Matters (video)
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by J.A. Ginsburg
I stared at the small glass bottle in the exhibit case for quite a while. Somehow it had survived millennia. Taken out of the case at the Museo del Vetro—the Museum of Glass—on the Italian island of Murano, its specialness would have been obscured by an utterly unremarkable appearance. Spectacular glasswork is part of the Venetian sparkle, its seductive shimmer. Such a small plain bottle. Who made it? What did it hold? How had it managed to navigate the centuries intact? It was late winter and the tourist rush was still off in the distance, so I had the Museum mostly to myself. Murano, too, for that matter. I strolled narrow streets festooned with colorful laundry hung to dry overhead, nibbled on the most delicious cookies from a local bakery, listened to seabirds and felt the warmth the fast-approaching spring. It was easy to slip back in time—maybe not millennia, but certainly a few centuries into the past—to a time when even the plainest of glass jars was still something to treasure. In a pre-plastic world, glass provided secure, transparent storage. In Italy, of course, form and function are incomplete without beauty. The little bottle was a light translucent lavender. Last fall, I made a glass bowl of my own at a workshop given by Chicago’s Ignite Glass Studio (a particularly popular offering through the Chicago Ideas Week festival). Glass, it turns out, is neither a liquid or a solid, but an amorphous solid, which means it has properties of both. The basic recipe is simple—silica (sand), soda ash and lime—but it can be chemically manipulated in the most remarkable ways, adding color, thermal properties and resilience (the newest version of Corning’s Gorilla glass for smartphones and tablets can be bent without breaking). Glass can be molded in a kiln, “floated” on tin sheets to make windows, rolled, spun and even 3D printed. Blowing glass, though, has an almost alchemical magic to it. The glassblower literally breathes life into the form by providing a bubble of air and must keep the form alive by constantly spinning a heavy metal rod. What starts as an unpromising molten blob attached at one end slowly transforms into something delicate, translucent, ethereal. It takes brute strength and a delicate touch, neither of which I possess, but my master teacher deftly filled in the gaps. The video below is a demonstration from the Corning Glass Museum. Watch all the way through and you’ll be joining in with the videographer exclaiming early and often, “Wow!” My little bowl was nowhere near as elaborate, but still fills me with wonder. It turns out it doesn't matter whether the glass is half-filled or half-empty. The point is there is a glass.
GLASS AND TECH: FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO SILICON VALLEY No one material has been at the center of more disruptive innovation than glass. Edison's lightbulb, the archetypal symbol of innovation, required a glassblower to blow the bulb. Centuries earlier, Galileo, who ground his own lenses, pointed his telescope toward the heavens, boldly looked where no one had looked so clearly before, and profoundly altered our view of the cosmos and our place in it. The Space Age had begun. Similarly, microscopes made the invisible visible, leading to new theories of disease and a much deeper understanding of how bodily systems worked. These tools of superhuman sight led to insights that changed the world. Eyeglasses, which date back as far as 13th century, did not bestow superhuman powers, but vastly improved countless lives by bringing the day-to-day into focus. Eight centuries later, a project to make affordable glasses in Africa just won a prestigious award from the Siemens Foundation for empowering technologies. A single eyeglass machine carted from village to village by a trained operator can churn out thousands of pairs at a cost of less than one dollar per to manufacture That's not just life-changing, but potentially society-changing. Back to the 19th century, Edison's lightbulb almost literally lit the way for a revolution in electronics that would define much of the 20th century. Vacuum tubes, which made radio, television and sound recording possible, also required glassblowers in their development. Even today, many university and corporate labs have a glassblowing studios on premises to fabricate equipment and components. The story of Steve Jobs' discovery of a failed glass product developed by Corning in the early 1950s is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend. In a mind-boggling six weeks, the company manufactured enough of its super-tough Gorilla glass to launch Apple's first iPhone, ushering in the era of the touchscreen. Tablets and smart phones are just the beginning. Thin bendable glass is the next gadget frontier: "...it also means an entire galaxy of new types of gadgets that haven't even been conceived of yet. Imagine an in-car display that ripples and wraps itself across your dashboard, or some sort of super-charged Magic Eightball that is simply a sphere with a 360-degree display. These gadgets are still a ways off, but the likes of Corning, Apple, Samsung, and LG are skating to where the puck is going. In 20 years, you won't be able to believe that the world of gadgets was once so boxy. —John Brownlee / Fast Company Design SKYLINES AND POWER PLAYS Modern cities glisten with glass. Buildings soar ever taller, reflecting the sun, the weather, each other. But there is much more to a building's glass surface than an elegant shimmer. Glass can let in light, add color and provide thermal insulation. Now, with integrated solar panels, a building's skin can also generate electricity. Imagine: a city full of elegant buildings that double as power plants. Let's raise a glass to that. From ancient perfume bottles and stargazing telescopes to the lights of Broadway and a clean energy future, glass just seems to have a way of bringing out the best civilization has to offer.
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The Arc / Glass podcast features interviews with:
• Lorem Ipsum, historian at the Corning Museum of Glass • Dolor Sit Amet, tech writer at Wired magazine • Consectetur Adipisicing, glass artisan at Ignite Glass Studio • Elit Sed, lead reseracher, Onyx integrated solar • Do Eiusmod, founder of the Glass Beach Museum Listen the full podcast or by segment. Full podcast: http://arc.com/glass/fullpodcast (Share!)
Lorem Ipsum, historian at the Corning Museum of Glass:
(Share!) related links: 1) lkjladjflsajfsla;.com 2) kjadslfajlksajl;.com 3) dklfjalsdjlksk.com • Dolor Sit Amet, tech writer at Wired magazine
(Share!) related links: 1) lkjladjflsajfsla;.com 2) kjadslfajlksajl;.com 3) dklfjalsdjlksk.com 4) lkdfjlaskjfsal.net • Consectetur Adipisicing, glass artisan at Ignite Glass Studio
(Share!) related links: 1) lkjladjflsajfsla;.com 2) kjadslfajlksajl;.com 3) dklfjalsdjlksk.com 4) lkdfjlaskjfsal.net • Elit Sed, lead reseracher, Onyx integrated solar
(Share!) 1) lkjladjflsajfsla;.com 2) kjadslfajlksajl;.com 3) dklfjalsdjlksk.com • Do Eiusmod, founder of the Glass Beach Museum
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