During the early 17th century, window glass was first manufactured in Brittain. It was during this time that glass windows started to become more popular for homes across the western world. The manufacturing process was still crude.
Glass window panes in homes; however, didn't become more widely used until the 17th century. Stained glass in churches was used much earlier, about the 13th century.
An early alternative to glass was flattened animal horn, used as early as the 14th century. The poorer folk had to cover their windows with oiled cloth or parchment to keep the drafts out and let some light in. That's why the old houses had very tiny windows. The Romans were the first known to use glass for windows.
1700s, early 1800s
Plate glass was introduced c. 1700 but would not become the dominant process over crown glass until the 19th century. Crown glass involved a blown glass bubble flattened, reheated then rotated to create a dome shape. It could then be cut into shapes or filled in as appropriate.
Ancient Rome was the first civilization to have glass windows. It discovered the technology of mixing sand and other component materials and heating the mixture so it could be pressed and cast into small pieces that were formed into panes.
C. M. Woolgar in The Great Household in Medieval England writes that glass was used in royal houses late in the 12th century, but that it wasn't until late in Henry III's reign that most windows in the principal rooms of royal houses were glazed.
In the 17th century, the glass industry was transformed through changing tastes and new glass formulas. Venetian glass remained popular throughout Europe, but north of the Alps, glassmakers found new ways to produce perfectly colorless glass.
At present, it is accepted that in China, glassmaking began around the 5th century BCE during the late Spring and Autumn to early Warring States periods.
The first evidence of a glass industry in Britain dates back to 680 AD in the area around Wearmouth and Jarrow in the North of England. By the 1200s, the industry had spread to include areas around the Weald, Surrey, Sussex and Chiddingford.
Glass as an independent object (mostly as beads) dates back to about 2500 bc. It originated perhaps in Mesopotamia and was brought later to Egypt. Vessels of glass appeared about 1450 bc, during the reign of Thutmose III, a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Egypt.
Glass-making in Ancient Egypt began with quartz. Small pieces of the mineral would be finely crushed and mixed with plant ash. The quartz-ash mixture was then heated at fairly low temperatures in clay containers to roughly 750° C, until it formed a ball of molten material.
In the early 16th and 17th centuries glassmaking (the manufacture of glass from raw materials) and glassworking (the creation of objects from glass) occurred within the same glasshouse. Glass was also recycled at this time in the form of cullet.
Glass Manufacturing History
By the late 1500's, many Venetians went to northern Europe seeking better life where they established factories and brought the art of Venetian glassblowing. By 1575, English glassmakers were made glass in Venetian fashion.
Glass Production in the 1600s-1800s
In 1668, the French company Saint Gobain perfected a “broad glass” method of manufacture that involved blowing long glass cylinders slitting and unrolling them to form a nearly flat rectangle. This glass was then ground and polished on both sides.
Glass Windows only started appearing in the very late Middle Ages/Early Modern Period. In the era of the War of the Roses in the UK and very early Renaissance in Europe. They first started appearing on the inner towers of Nobles Castles as a sign of wealth. The more windows you had then typically the more money.
In the 11th century, windows above the first floor were about 4 feet high and 12 to 18 inches wide. The heads of the windows were either round or flat, and were splayed or set at the end of a tall, wide recess.
1065. A useful 12th-century source on medieval glass manufacture is the De diversis artibus ("On various arts") of Theophilus Presbyter, a Benedictine monk believed by some scholars to be Roger of Helmarshausen, a metal glass and pigment worker of the late 11th and early 12th centuries.
This 'Balustroid Glass' would have been produced from c. 1730 to c. 1740. Claire's crash landing in 1743 perfectly suits having such glass at the Glencorse Old Kirk, which may even have been brought from Clan Mackenzie's House, as the glass would've been of substantial value.
The earliest known glass objects, of the mid-third millennium BCE, were beads, perhaps initially created as accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing.
Early in the 17th century, the first window glass was manufactured in Britain. It was broadsheet glass, a lengthy balloon of glass that was blown, and then both ends of the glass were removed, leaving a cylinder to be split and flattened.
Glass was used in a number of ways by the Saxons and Vikings; for drinking vessels, window glass, jewellery, enamelling and beads. Remains of glass making furnaces have been found in York and Glastonbury.
It is believed that the earliest glass object was created around 3500BC in Egypt and Eastern Mesopotamia. The oldest specimens of glass are from Egypt and date back to 2000 B.C. In 1500BC the industry was well established in Egypt. After 1200BC the Egyptians learned to press glass into molds.
The ancient Roman glass industry was divided into two categories: glass making and glass working (1). Roman glassmaking workshops, which have been found through the Roman Empire, as well as in the city of Rome itself, were usually situated near places where the raw materials were available.
Glassblowing was invented by Syrian craftsmen in the area of Sidon, Aleppo, Hama, and Palmyra in the 1st century bc, where blown vessels for everyday and luxury use were produced commercially and exported to all parts of the Roman Empire.
Glass is made primarily of this substance found in sand
Well, technically, the main ingredient is a component of sand: Quartz, aka silicon dioxide or silica sand. The quartz is combined with other materials, or you might consider them ingredients like you would find in a recipe.