The History of Glass — From Deadly Secrets to Modern Science

In 1291, Venice made it illegal for glassmakers to leave the island of Murano. Sharing the secret abroad was punishable by death. They weren't guarding gold. They were guarding a recipe for melted sand — the most important invention you've never thought about. This is the hidden history of glass: how a material invented to fake gemstones let us see Jupiter's moons, the living cell, and X-rays — and now carries 99% of the world's internet under the ocean. From Mesopotamian bead-makers faking lapis lazuli, to Roman glassblowers who turned treasure into trash, to the Murano masters who could carry swords but could not leave, to Colbert's spies, the 293,655 panes of the Crystal Palace, and that Friday in August 1970 when a Corning scientist looked in a microscope and wrote one word: "Whoopee!" OBJECTLORE — the hidden history of ordinary things. New documentary every week. Subscribe for the next object. Corrections are welcome in the comments — we pin them. #objectlore #history #documentary ARCHIVAL IMAGES Jacopo de' Barbari, View of Venice (1500) — Museo Correr / Wikimedia Commons Egyptian glass, Amarna Period — The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access Tommaso da Modena, Hugh of Saint-Cher (1352) — Wikimedia Commons Philippe de Champaigne, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1655) — The Met, Open Access Diderot & d'Alembert, Encyclopédie, plates on mirror glass — public domain Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius (1610) — public domain Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665) — Wellcome Collection / public domain Jacques-Louis David, Lavoisier and his Wife (1788) — The Met, Open Access W. C. Röntgen, Hand mit Ringen (1895) — Wellcome Collection Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition (1854) — public domain Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division