GLASS PRINTING TYPES.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2163, 9 December 1875, Page 4

GLASS PRINTING TYPES.

It is stated by Pliny that during the reign of Tiberius some inventive genius discovered a method by which glass could be rendered flexible. The authorities of the day seem to have taken alarm at this discovery, upon the singular notion that the precious metals would thereby he depreciated in value; ' and the reward allotted to the hapless inventor was, that his machinery was destroyed, and he himself was put to death for his ill-judged attempt to alter the properties of matter. Prom that day to this glass has remained the beautiful but brittle and breakable material which we all know it is—ductile and amenable to the most delicate manipulation when sufficiently heated, but refractory and resisting all attempts to change its form when cold. The fragility and consequent inability to bear the ill-usage of ordinary life which have been tho standing opprobrium of glass, have at last been done away with by the "toughening process 1' invented by M. De la Basties. The invention in itself is extremely simple, and consists in heating the glass to a temperature little short of melting, and then plunging it in a bath curiously compounded of oleaginous and resinous matter. Simple as the process is in appearance, its success depends upon the observance of numerous conditions of great delicacy; and it cost the inventor many years of patient labor before his discovery was perfected and assumed a practical shape. Glass which has undergone M. De la Basties' process, though precisely the same in appearance and color as before, and just as capable of being cut or polished as ordinary glass, has acquired such an amount of toughness and elasticity that it will successfully resist all ordinary forms of violence. It may be thrown about a room, or dropped on. the floor, or submitted to the impact of heavy bodies, without breaking or showing any symptom of injury. It need hardly be pointed out that the sphere of glass in tho arts and social life is, by ths discovery, almost indefinitely extended, and ' it Ts hardly possible to place any limits to the possible applications iv science and

manufactures to which o it may not be found to be fitted. No better proof of this could be desired than the fact that since its discovery this new glass has been employed successfully in place of type metal in the manufacture of printing types.—Edinburgh Courant.