Abstract
THE Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on December 8 was delivered by Major R. M. Weeks, a director of Messrs. Pilkington Brothers, Ltd., on “The Making of a Sheet of Glass”. Major Weeks first gave a brief outline of some fundamental scientific considerations, with special reference to composition, the tendency to devitrify, and the resistance of the product to weathering. Melting is carried out by one of two processes, namely, the older method in which the raw materials are placed in pots in a gas-fired furnace, and the modern method by which the raw materials are introduced at one end of a continuous furnace and the molten glass withdrawn at the other. The various processes necessary for the manufacture of sheet and plate-glass were described in detail. Films were shown of the hand-blown and the machines-drawn cylinder sheet glass processes. The latter has been superseded by the flat-drawn process, in which the sheet is drawn in the form of a flat continuous ribbon. To illustrate the manufacture of plate glass, an interesting film of the Bicheroux casting process was shown and reference was made to the latest process of plate glass manufacture, the flow process, in which the molten glass is delivered to rollers which form a continuous ribbon of glass. In the modern continuous grinding and polishing machine the glass plates, laid on a moving bed, pass successively under the grinding and polishing machines. The discourse concluded with a description of two novel forms of flat glass of interest, namely, opaque glass manufactured in black, white and various colours and known as vitrolite; and toughened glass, known as ‘armour-plate’ or ‘triplex toughened’, which has a high resistance to fracture combined with the property, if broken, of shattering into small harmless fragments.
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Glass-Making. Nature 132, 924 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132924b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132924b0