The Nature of Glass: Technologies of Transparency, Materials on the Move

Abstract

Scientific instruments such as telescopes and distillation columns have played a prominent role in the history of science, but the key material of which these instruments were made has received scant attention. Focusing on the glass used to make scientific instruments and on the supply chains on which its production relied–allows us to see that “glass” covers a variety of materials and that the nature of glass depends on the material knowledge and environmental expertise invested in its manufacture. Between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, glassware moved back and forth between a dependence on processing locally sourced materials and reusing household items and a reliance on intraregional supply chains of specialty materials.