NO FLYING GLASS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1942, Page 4

NO FLYING GLASS

FROM BRITAIN’S WINDOWS DURING AIR ATTACKS. After losing millions of panes of glass in air raids, Britain now knows almost everything there is to be known about keeping glass from scattering. Although nothing will prevent window glass from being broken by blast, it can be so bound together that splinters from it do not fly about and injure people either inside the bombed building or in the streets outside. The task .which the scientists of the British Government’s Building Research Station set themselves was to find materials, not in demand for more urgent war needs, which would stick firmly to glass and remain effective for a reasonable length of time —aims which apply equally to any other country likely to suffer air attack. Many popular remedies have been rejected as worthless in these tests, including most of the liquid treatments and also the crosswire and pad contraption of which so many were sold in Britain to shops and stores early in the war. Strips of adhesive cloth tape or cellulose film, though of less value than treatment covering the whole surface, are reasonably effective if they are closely spaced; but paperstrips are of. no use unless a really stout paper is used. Research tests have, however, brought to light a useful range of materials. They showed two classes to be of value —transparent cellulose sheets and textile netting. Both of these, when stuck all over a glass pane, effectively prevent splinters from flying.