FINE CLOTH MADE FROM GLASS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

FINE CLOTH MADE FROM GLASS

And now—the Glass Age. When women buy a new "silk” dress, it will be made.of glass. When a gardener buys mulch for his garden, it will be glass. When you build a new house, the bricks will be —glass.

It all sounds incredible, but it’s fact. New developments' in glass research laboratories are providing civilization with an old material in a new guise, as solids that cannot, be broken and as fabrics.

Glass underwear, rubberized glass fabric for hospital beds, glass wicks that burn with a clean flame, glass “wool” for use as a garden mulch, tempered glass bricks which you can’t see through, but which admit up to 86.5 per cent, of light—these are some of the latest achievements. The glass mulching wool for winter gardens resembles fluffy cotton wadding, but is really a mass of glass fibres. Each fibre is one-tenth to one-fifteenth as fine as human hair, but is so flexible and strong that it can be bent sharply without breaking. Plants protected by this glass wool were found to be larger, greener, and more vigorous than those protected by the usual mulch. The perfection of a continuous glass fibre has made it possible to produce a cloth which has the appearance and feel of fine silk. This new fabrft can be washed like ordinary glass tumblers, and is almost indestructible. Bricks of tempered glass, for housebuilding, are being used more and more in America. They insulate against heat flow and sound, and are fireproof, yet are as easily cleaned as windows.