The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

Chapter 7 delves into developments in scientific glassware and their impact on medicine and technology. Although glass is an ancient material, its use in scientific fields is relatively new. In the late 19th century, German chemist Otto Schott drew on his family’s experience in glassmaking to experiment with the chemicals in glass. In collaboration with Professor Ernest Abbe, he produced glass that was free of flaws and suitable for optical lenses. Schott later experimented with the amount of boron in glass. He learned that small amounts of boron improved the ability of glass to bend light, that large amounts of boron prevented glass from expanding when heated, and that moderate amounts of boron allowed glass to withstand dangerous chemicals, such as acids. Schott’s glass was highly sought after, and Germany was the main source of glass for microscopes, telescopes, and laboratory ware. Inscribed on such glass was the name Jena, the place where Schott earned his doctoral degree.

In the early 20th century, Corning Glass Works in New York State sought to produce an alternative to Jena glass. Their highly resistant Nonex glass was ideal for railway lights. A Corning physicist named J. T. Littleton experimented with Nonex after his wife, Bessie, broke an expensive casserole dish and insisted that he make her durable cookware. He cut the bottom off two cylindrical Nonex battery jars to make round pans and brought them home to his wife. Although household servants (young women who immigrated to New York State for work) did most of the household’s cooking, Bessie fancied herself a baker. She made white cake using one of her husband’s Nonex pans. The cake emerged from the oven an even shade of brown, surpassing the results of Bessie’s metal pans. Littleton brought the cake to work the next day, gave it to his colleagues, and extolled the virtues of using Nonex in the kitchen: The cake was not just evenly baked but also easy to remove from the glass pan. Littleton’s colleagues asked Bessie to experiment with other foods and report on the pan’s performance. Bessie made a variety of dishes, including French fries, grits, and collard greens. The food did not stick to the Nonex pan. In addition, the glass did not retain the food’s flavor like her metal cookware did. Scientists at Corning conducted their own experiments and discovered that glass pans cook differently than metal ones:

Heat from the oven walls, like the rays of the sun, transmitted through the clear glass, cooking the cake, while the mirrored surface reflected that heat back […] A cake in a metal pan gets heated from the hot air in the oven and the heat from the oven rack. The glass, meanwhile, [lets] heat into the cake a third way, from the invisible rays of heat, like the sun, which browns our skins and the crust of a loaf of bread (179).

The company renamed its Nonex glass cookware Pyrex and began monetizing it. President Woodrow Wilson encouraged American glass companies like Corning to create glass for military uses in the period before World War I. When the country entered the war, it confiscated thousands of German patents, including the recipes for Jena glass. The US overtook Germany as the leader in the international glass market after the war, supplying laboratories, homes, and the automobile industry with Pyrex wares. Encouraged by advances and high tariffs on German glass, the US entered the Glass Age and monopolized international markets. Developments in glass also marked the beginning of the Electronic Age. Sophisticated glassware allowed for scientific advances, such as J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron in 1895. Thomson’s discovery led to an expanded understanding of matter, providing clues about how galaxies, stars, and atoms formed and how hot gases from the Big Bang eventually became us. The electron also became the building block of technology, allowing scientists to understand circuits, static electricity, batteries, piezoelectricity, magnets, generators, and transistors.