Lift Up Your Glasses

 

   Nature made the first glass: black obsidian from volcanoes. It could be chipped into knives and scrapers. It became an object of skill and art. People figured out they could make pots by baking clay; but making their own glass was much harder. Making glass required a permanent settlement. And that required the invention of agriculture.

   Not to get too deep into all this, last Spring, Teresa and I were making our way home to Minnesota from visiting the kids in Massachusetts. We were in New York State, out west of Binghamton when we ended up in downtown Corning. We had no intention of going to Corning. I blamed the GPS, but it could have been pilot error.

   Corning turned out to be a charming place with lots of brick buildings and intriguing shops. Across the river was a gigantic museum devoted to glass. We needed to get home, but on our most recent trip back to Minnesota, we planned to spend two nights in Corning to give the museum the time it seemed to deserve.

   When we bought our tickets and entered the museum, I had my doubts. The first rooms were enormous, stark white rooms with abstract glass sculptures. Then the curved walls of the room led to more interesting and humorous pieces: a red glass chandelier with ten crows picking at it like roadkill. The sculptor was from South America and his work was supposed to symbolize something.

   I couldn't begin to imagine how these fantastical works had been made. I knew though we, as a species, had come a long way from picking up a piece of glass outside a volcano. My understanding was helped  by spending a little time watching a demo. We sat in a small theatre and watched two workers perform a ballet of glass making. They blew a blob of glass into a cylinder which they then flattened into a square of glass. The piece they were making went in out of the furnace many times to keep it pliable. There was a camera inside the furnace. Another worker gave a play-by-play description of what was happening. After thirty minutes, they made a piece of glass the size of one I could buy in the local hardware store for a dollar.

   Automation was the way we all could have cheap glass. The next area was a display of the technology behind glass. The individual displays were so well done even a child could understand them, so I too was able to enjoy them. Sitting on edge in the middle of all this was a 200 inch tall white disc. Two hundred inches is 16' 8". This was the mold for the mirror at the heart of the Palomar Telescope. This first attempt  had been a flop. The next try was successful, and the mold and all was shipped by special train to Pasadena, where it resides to this day. That all happened in 1934.

   Lunch in the cafeteria was surprisingly good. This museum was set up for much larger crowds than were present on this late September day. The kids were all in school, God love 'em and the big lot for busses was empty. 

   After lunch I was ready for the last section: the 35 centuries of glass. It's hard to tell whether glass as we know it was first made by the Egyptians or the Mesopotamians. Either way, it happened 35 centuries ago. They melted sand and formed the glob into various shapes. There was enough surplus wheat to pay someone to do this. Major advancements in glassmaking often came through mistakes. This is still true today. 

   The blowing of glass was the next major breakthrough. The Romans didn't invent glassblowing; that was the Syrians.  But the Romans scaled it up and made glass a household item. A ticket to the museum is good for two days and it would make sense not to try to see everything in one day. My own vision became clouded after about five hours. Besides, you need to save time for the gift shop.

   The gift shop is free to visit. In fact just visiting the gift shop might be enough to let you feel you'd seen the whole museum. There was one small sculpture with a $16,000 price tag. It was locked behind glass. There was also a bargain room where we stocked up. Teresa and I both gave this place five stars. Just don't visit in summer.

One man's roadkill...