[1] The name Glasites or Glassites was generally used in Scotland; in England and America the name Sandemanians was more common.
GLASS (O.E. glæs, cf. Ger. Glas, perhaps derived from an old Teutonic root gla-, a variant of glo-, having the general sense of shining, cf. “glare,” “glow”), a hard substance, usually transparent or translucent, which from a fluid condition at a high temperature has passed to a solid condition with sufficient rapidity to prevent the formation of visible crystals. There are many varieties of glass differing widely in chemical composition and in physical qualities. Most varieties, however, have certain qualities in common. They pass through a viscous stage in cooling from a state of fluidity; they develop effects of colour when the glass mixtures are fused with certain metallic oxides; they are, when cold, bad conductors both of electricity and heat, they are easily fractured by a blow or shock and show a conchoidal fracture; they are but slightly affected by ordinary solvents, but are readily attacked by hydrofluoric acid.
The structure of glass has been the subject of repeated investigations. The theory most widely accepted at present is that glass is a quickly solidified solution, in which silica, silicates, borates, phosphates and aluminates may be either solvents or solutes, and metallic oxides and metals may be held either in solution or in suspension. Long experience has fixed the mixtures, so far as ordinary furnace temperatures are concerned, which produce the varieties of glass in common use. The essential materials of which these mixtures are made are, for English flint glass, sand, carbonate of potash and red lead; for plate and sheet glass, sand, carbonate or sulphate of soda and carbonate of lime; and for Bohemian glass, sand, carbonate of potash and carbonate of lime. It is convenient to treat these glasses as “normal” glasses, but they are in reality mixtures of silicates, and cannot rightly be regarded as definite chemical compounds or represented by definite chemical formulae.
The knowledge of the chemistry of glass-making has been considerably widened by Dr F. O. Schott’s experiments at the Jena glass-works. The commercial success of these works has demonstrated the value of pure science to manufactures.
The recent large increase in the number of varieties of glass has been chiefly due to developments in the manufacture of optical glass. Glasses possessing special qualities have been required, and have been supplied by the introduction of new combinations of materials. The range of the specific gravity of glasses from 2.5 to 5.0 illustrates the effect of modified compositions. In the same way glass can be rendered more or less fusible, and its stability can be increased both in relation to extremes of temperature and to the chemical action of solvents.
The fluidity of glass at a high temperature renders possible the processes of ladelling, pouring, casting and stirring. A mass of glass in a viscous state can be rolled with an iron roller like dough; can be rendered hollow by the pressure of the human breath or by compressed air; can be forced by air pressure, or by a mechanically driven plunger, to take the shape and impression of a mould; and can be almost indefinitely extended as solid rod or as hollow tube. So extensible is viscous glass that it can be drawn out into a filament sufficiently fine and elastic to be woven into a fabric.
Glasses are generally transparent but may be translucent or opaque. Semi-opacity due to crystallization may be induced in many glasses by maintaining them for a long period at a temperature just insufficient to cause fusion. In this way is produced the crystalline, devitrified material, known as Réaumur’s porcelain. Semi-opacity and opacity are usually produced by the addition to the glass-mixtures of materials which will remain in suspension in the glass, such as oxide of tin, oxide of arsenic, phosphate of lime, cryolite or a mixture of felspar and fluorspar.
Little is known about the actual cause of colour in glass beyond the fact that certain materials added to and melted with certain glass-mixtures will in favourable circumstances produce effects of colour. The colouring agents are generally metallic oxides. The same oxide may produce different colours with different glass-mixtures, and different oxides of the same metal may produce different colours. The purple-blue of cobalt, the chrome green or yellow of chromium, the dichroic canary-colour of uranium and the violet of manganese, are constant. Ferrous oxide produces an olive green or a pale blue according to the glass with which it is mixed. Ferric oxide gives a yellow colour, but requires the presence of an oxidizing agent to prevent reduction to the ferrous state. Lead gives a pale yellow colour. Silver oxide, mixed as a paint and spread on the surface of a piece of glass and heated, gives a permanent yellow stain. Finely divided vegetable charcoal added to a soda-lime glass gives a yellow colour. It has been suggested that the colour is due to sulphur, but the effect can be produced with a glass mixture containing no sulphur, free or combined, and by increasing the proportion of charcoal the intensity of the colour can be increased until it reaches black opacity. Selenites and selenates give a pale pink or pinkish yellow. Tellurium appears to give a pale pink tint. Nickel with a potash-lead glass gives a violet colour, and a brown colour with a soda-lime glass. Copper gives a peacock-blue which becomes green if the proportion of the copper oxide is increased. If oxide of copper is added to a glass mixture containing a strong reducing agent, a glass is produced which when first taken from the crucible is colourless but on being reheated develops a deep crimson-ruby colour. A similar glass, if its cooling is greatly retarded, produces throughout its substance minute crystals of metallic copper, and closely resembles the mineral called avanturine. There is also an intermediate stage in which the glass has a rusty red colour by reflected light, and a purple-blue colour by transmitted light. Glass containing gold behaves in almost precisely the same way, but the ruby glass is less crimson than copper ruby glass. J. E. C. Maxwell Garnett, who has studied the optical properties of these glasses, has suggested that the changes in colour correspond with changes effected in the structure of the metals as they pass gradually from solution in the glass to a state of crystallization.
Owing to impurities contained in the materials from which glasses are made, accidental coloration or discoloration is often produced. For this reason chemical agents are added to glass mixtures to remove or neutralize accidental colour. Ferrous oxide is the usual cause of discoloration. By converting ferrous into ferric oxide the green tint is changed to yellow, which is less noticeable. Oxidation may be effected by the addition to the glass mixture of a substance which gives up oxygen at a high temperature, such as manganese dioxide or arsenic trioxide. With the same object, red lead and saltpetre are used in the mixture for potash-lead glass. Manganese dioxide not only acts as a source of oxygen, but develops a pink tint in the glass, which is complementary to and neutralizes the green colour due to ferrous oxide.