TABLE OF CONTENTS The presence of glasses in our everyday environment is so common that we rarely notice their existence. Our current casual attitude toward the family of materials known as glasses has not always existed. Early Egyptians considered glasses as precious materials, as evidenced by the glass beads found in the tombs and golden death masks of ancient Pharaohs. The cave-dwellers of even earlier times relied on chipped pieces of obsidian, a natural volcanic glass, for tools and weapons, i.e., scrapers, knives, axes, and heads for spears and arrows.
Humans have been producing glasses by melting of raw materials for thousands of years. Egyptian glasses date from at least 7000 B.C. How did the first production of artificial glasses occur? One scenario suggests that the combination of sea salt (NaCl) and perhaps bones (CaO) present in the embers of a fire built on the sands (SiO 2) at the edge of a saltwater sea (the Mediterranean?), sufficiently reduced the melting point of the sand to a temperature where crude, low quality glass could form. At some later time, some other nomad found these lumps of glass in the sand and recognized their unusual nature. Eventually, some genius of ancient times realized that the glass found in the remains of such fires might be produced deliberately, and discovered the combination of materials which lead to the formation of the first commercial glasses.
The first crude man-made glasses were used to produce beads, or to shape into tools requiring sharp edges.
