The history of the discovery of glass is very old, the first records date back to 5000 BC; when Phoenician merchants accidentally discovered the new material when they built a fire – on the beachfront – on which they placed blocks of sodium nitrate (which served to hold their pots). Fire, combined with sand and sodium nitrate, gave rise, for the first time, to a transparent liquid, glass.

Later, 100 BC, the Romans were already producing glass by blowing molds techniques, to make their “windows”. In 300 AD, Emperor Constantine began to charge fees and taxes to glassmakers, such was the diffusion and importance (profitability) of the product. Between 500 and 600 AD, a new method made it possible to make flat glass by blowing a sphere and then enlarging it by rotating in an oven (until the 19th century, most of the glass production was done by this system).

From the Middle Ages onwards, glass making has been a subject of experts jealously guarded against family restrictions and industrial espionage. The introduction of French techniques into England in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, was carried out only with great difficulty. The introduction of drawn “crown” glass was carried out around 1680 by John Bowles with bribery and robbery from France and the British Cast Plate Glass Company, established in Ravenhead St. Helensm in 1773, near the Cheshire sand deposits, depended on skill imported from France. The early primacy of France was exemplified by the Compagnie de St. Gobain, installed about 300 years ago, to glaze the Palace of Versailles.

The glass industry, as we know, based on mass production and national and international markets, was born out of the Industrial Revolution, particularly in the 20th century automotive industry, and also from the invention of two key production methods – the stretch sheet process and the float.

By 1940, the structure of the primary glass industry in the Western world was established with four nations involved, each dominated by a small number of major manufacturers, all related and separated by a network of patents and interdependencies. Currently there are a series of processes for the production of different types of glass, at SVA we use modern techniques to bring the best cost-benefit to our customers.

Source: USP.br