The Float Glass Let Us See The World

In our impression,flat glass seems to be a product of Western industrialization. In fact, as early as the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han Dynasties, there were flat glass products. Archaeological evidence shows that Egypt invented flat glass sheets around 3,000 BC and reached China in the 5th century BC. However, when the Chinese used glasses and glass windows, they were all imported products from the West during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The question has arisen. Why hasn't sheet glass developed in China for more than 2,000 years?

The reason is that the level of Chinese ancient porcelain manufacturing was too high. At that time, Chinese porcelain far exceeded flat glass in terms of craftsmanship and practicality. Sheet glass has become a technology that is not valued in China. When people discovered that the use of flat glass was far broader than that of porcelain, the Chinese and the sheet glass had passed.

How can Westerners devote themselves to the flat glass industry? The important reason is that there is no kaolin clay in the West. Since the Roman times, Europeans could not make porcelain, but had to produce glass sheets. Because Europeans have always produced flat glass, they have made breakthroughs in glass technology. Clear glass and flat glass have been produced from the original frosted glass to the twelfth and third centuries.

Since then, the situation has been completely different. Historians analyzed 20 scientific experiments that had a great impact on human society and found that 16 of them used flat glass, most of which even depended entirely on float sheet glass. For example, Newton used prisms to analyze light, Pasteur developed artificial vaccines, Thomson invented picture tubes, and so on. The Italian Renaissance painter relied on mirror reflections to complete the transformation from three-dimensional to two-dimensional. Spectacles, microscopes, and telescopes, whether in the macro or micro fields, human vision has been greatly expanded because of fat glass. Flat glass makes the world gradually establish an unprecedented confidence - this world is observable, understandable and researchable.