All About Glass

All About Glass

This is your resource for exploring various topics in glass: delve deeper with this collection of articles, multimedia, and virtual books all about glass. Content is frequently added to the area, so check back for new items. If you have a topic you'd like to see covered, send us your suggestion. If you have a specific question, Ask a Glass Question at our Rakow Research Library.

The Quest to See More: Glass Lenses
Article

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins.    — Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862 A glass lens. It’s nothing more than a curved piece of glass. So simple. So familiar. It’s changed the way we perceive the world. In 1608, when Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershey held up two lenses, one

Lens Making in the 1600s
Video

Three centuries ago, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek made hundreds of simple microscopes. He experimented with at least three methods to make their tiny lenses but kept his techniques secret. Based on scholarly research, this video made by The Corning Museum of Glass demonstrates how van Leeuwenhoek might

Be Microscopic!
Video

Take a #cellfie in the Be Microscopic interactive in the Revealing the Invisible exhibition at the Rakow Research Library. This exhibition tells the story of the exploration of the microscopic world from the 1600s through the 1800s. Unleash your sense of discovery as you explore the invisible

Behind the Glass Lecture | Foldscopes with Max Coyle
Video

Max Coyle along with Dr. Manu Prakesh, both experts in applied physics at Stanford University, created Foldscope, an origami-based microscope made of paper. The lens for this paper microscope is a small glass bead. The cost required to make it? Less than one U.S. dollar. Coyle, Prakesh, and their

Revealing the Invisible: The History of Glass and the Microscope
Article

Glass has long made it possible for people to see the unseeable. The earliest glass “lenses” were actually magnifiers placed directly on objects, helping their users to inspect or read documents that strained their eyesight. True lenses that improved vision appeared first in spectacles around 1285,