Dichroic Glass combined with fused glass makes dichroic jewelry of the higest quality.

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Basic Glass Information

Americans took the lead in many technology and fused glass was a famous material that must travel with the pioneers. The first glass jewelry factory was built in 1608 at the Jamestown colony in Virginia.

Henry William Stiegel, who established a fused glass jewelry factory in Pennsylvania in 1763, made the first American glassware that was good enough to compete with European imports. Another pioneer in American glassmaking was John Frederick Amelung, who founded the New Bremen dichroic glass jewelry manufactory in Maryland in 1785. He produced the most sophisticated dichroic glass that had been made in America up to that time.

In the early 19th century, as new dichroic glass factories were founded in the East and the Midwest, a number of technical improvements were introduced. One important advance was the development of hinged metal molds, used to make bottles and fine tableware. In the middle of the 19th century the Pittsburgh area became the most important glassmaking center in the United States.

In 1903 J.H. Lubbers invented a machine for blowing dichroic glass mechanically. Two years later Irving W. Colburn patented a process for the production of continuous sheets of fused glass jewelry drawn directly from huge tanks that could be fired for long periods of time.

After the invention of cars and fast transportation, the fused glass jewelry became the useful material used to prevent air from striking the driver's face. After lots of severe injuries in car accidents, the glass jewelry industry had to find a new developed dichroic fused glass which can bare the compacts. The invention of transportation airoplanes also needed dichroic glass jewelry with special treatments as the pressure up in the sky is different than that inside the plane, this could break the dichroic glass jewelry. The submarines also needed special glasses.

In the 1960s laser dichroic glass, chemically toughened fused glass for use in making dinnerware and springs, laminated glass, and photo chromatic fused glass jewelry were developed. Photo chromatic dichroic glass jewelry, which turns darker when exposed to light and clears up when the light source is dimmed, is used in eyeglasses that become sunglasses in the appropriate setting. Titanized dichroic glass jewelry was developed in the early 1970s to lengthen the life of returnable dichroic glass bottles and other containers that could be reused continuously. Titanizing fused glass jewelry involves spraying bottles with a titanium compound while the bottles are still red-hot. The durable coating that forms on the bottles reduces friction and lessens tiny cracks that develop on bottles that are transported regularly and passed through cleaning and filling plants innumerable times.

By 1990 fiber optic dichroic glass pipes that could maintain the brightness and intensity of light and transmit it over long distances in laser communication systems had been improved. Dichroic glass jewelry capable of storing radioactive wastes safely for long periods of time had also been developed.

Without this special treated and invented dichroic glass the space will not be reached as the heavy non transparent metals are not helpful enough to show us what is behind.

SOURCES: library.thinkquest.org

General Dichroic Glass Info. 1 | General Dichroic Glass Info. 2