 Archaeological findings indicate that glass was first made in the Middle East, sometime in the 3000's B.C. In the beginning glass manufacturing was slow and costly. Glass melting furnaces were very small and hardly produced enough heat to melt glass properly. In ancient times, glass was a luxury item and few people could afford it. An unknown person discovered the blowpipe in the 1st century B.C. on the Phoenician coast. Glass manufacturing flourished in the Roman empire and spread from Italy to all countries under Roman jurisdiction. Due to mass production, glass become an everyday object and was removed from the list of luxuries. By the time of the Crusades, glass manufacture had been revived in Venice as a result of good contacts with Byzantium. Equipment was transferred to the Venetian island of Murano, where Soda Lime glass, better known as cristallo was developed. Venetian glass-blowers created some of the most delicate and graceful glass the world has ever seen. Despite their efforts to keep the technology secret, it soon spread around Europe. After 1890, glass uses and manufacturing developments increased so rapidly as to be almost revolutionary. The science and engineering of glass as a material was much better understood, and in the late 1950's Sir Alastair Pilkington introduced a new revolutionary production method (float glass production), by which 90% of flat glass is still manufactured today.
HISTORY OF GLASS MANUFACTURE 
GLASS MANUFACTURE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM - CHRONOLOGY Glass was not produced in significant quantities in this country until :- - 1226 BROAD SHEET was first made in Sussex, but of poor quality, and fairly opaque. Manufacture slowly decreased and ceased by the early 16th Century.
- 1330 French glassmakers produced CROWN GLASS for the first time at Rouen. Some French Crown and Broad Sheet was imported into the UK.
- 1620 BLOWN PLATE was produced in London by grinding and polishing Broad Sheet, and was used for mirrors and Coach Plates.
- 1678 CROWN GLASS was first produced in London. Because of its finer quality, this process predominated until the mid nineteenth century.
- 1688 The French produced POLISHED PLATE in larger sizes by casting and hand polishing.
 1773 English POLISHED PLATE by the French process was produced at Ravenshead. By 1800 a steam engine was used to carry out the grinding and polishing of the cast glass.- 1834 Robert Lucas Chance introduced IMPROVED CYLINDER SHEET, using a German process to produce finer quality and larger panes. This glass was used to glaze The Crystal Palace. The process was used extensively until early in the 20th Century to make window glass. From this period onwards machines were developed to automate the production of obscured Glass and later, window glass.
- 1847 James Hartley introduced a ROLLED PLATE glass with obscured ribbed finish, which is often found glazed in the roofs of railway termini.
- 1888 Chance Bros introduced MACHINE ROLLED patterned glass.
- 1898 Pilkingtons introduced Hexagonal Rolled WIRED CAST.
- 1903 MACHINE DRAWN CYLINDER Glass invented in the USA, was manufactured in the UK by Pilkingtons from 1910 to 1933.
- 1913 Belgium produced the first machine FLAT DRAWN SHEET glass. It was first drawn in the UK in 1919 in Kent .
- 1923 First UK production of continuous POLISHED PLATE glass, using single grinding system.
- 1938 Pilkingtons developed the twin ground POLISHED PLATE system.
- 1959 FLOAT GLASS was launched on the UK Market, invented by Sir Alistair Pilkington.
Production of glass
FLOAT GLASS PROCESS The term "float" glass derives from the production method, introduced in the UK by Sir Alastair Pilkington in 1959, by which process 90% of today's flat glass is manufactured. The raw materials (soda lime glass, silica sand, calcium, oxide, soda and magnesium) are properly weighted and mixed and then introduced into a furnace where they are melted at 1500° C. The molten glass then flows from the glass furnace onto a bath of molten tin in a continuous ribbon. The glass, which is highly viscous, and the tin, which is very fluid, do not mix so that the contact surface between these two materials is perfectly flat. When leaving the bath of molten tin the glass has cooled down sufficiently to pass to an annealing chamber called a lehr. Here it is cooled under controlled temperatures, until it is essentially at room temperature.
ROLLED GLASS PROCESS This describes glass made through a rolling process, whereby the semi-molten glass is squeezed between metal rollers to produce a ribbon with pre-defined thicknesses and patterned surfaces. This process is used for patterned figure and cast glass production. OTHER PROCESSES There are some other processes, such as the Pittsburgh process, or the Libbey-Owens process, nowadays rarely used for the production of flat glass.
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A list of most common glass types in the flat glass industry. Starting from basic glass types such as float glass, mirrors, trough security types and finishing with special glass types like electrochromic and photovoltaic glass. Selecting a glass type you will find a page with detailed description and topic related external links where you can scan more in depth.
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| The Future of glass Glass as a material in its own right will always exist. But many new applications and manufacturing processes will involve glass in combination with other materials. Optical fibres, for example, are currently manufactured with one or more different coating, which are often plastics. With the increasing sophistication of opto-electronic devices, there is an increasing need to combine optical and electronic devices for many applications such as transmission of audio, video and data information. Glasses and ceramics, either alone or composite with other materials, will find increasing application in biological and medical areas. Materials such as photochromic, electrochromic and thermochrominc glasses, which respond to external stimuli, are being developed with various, sometimes unusual, applications.
For More technical specifications and other detail visit :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Glass_in_buildings
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Designer Mayur N. Mehta
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