Exhibits Offer Window on Glass History

From windowpanes to optical fiber and magnifying glasses to casserole dishes, glass has been molded in magical ways to transform 20th century life.

Some glass inventions had whimsical origins; others sprang to life after years of laboratory experiments. Only when something works do “you realize that it’s not so complicated after all,” said Frank Hyde, 96, who unlocked a practical method for making ultra-pure glass back in 1934.

Hyde, whose discoveries set in motion today’s fiber-optic revolution in telecommunications, is among a host of glass pioneers memorialized at a Glass Innovation Center that opened in the Corning Museum of Glass, about 75 miles southeast of Rochester.

What quickly becomes clear from a stroll through the revamped museum is that this rigid liquid forged by fire--a tool of civilization for 3,500 years entwined in the 20th century’s most potent technological advances--is only beginning to surrender its mystery.

“Glass does many more things for us than we realize,” said Roy G. Gordon, a professor of chemistry at Harvard University.

During the 1970s energy crisis, Gordon invented a low-emissivity glass now in widespread use in skyscrapers and homes that doubled the insulation capacity of windows. “It allowed architects to build large areas of glass without penalty of an energy loss or a real loss of comfort,” he said.

The museum itself, built in 1951 but refashioned since 1996 at a cost of $62 million, is a multidimensional showcase of how glass of all shapes, colors and compositions is used in architecture.

“We look through glass instead of looking at it,” said Rob Casetti, the museum’s creative director. “We want visitors to . . . awaken to the wonder of this material.”

The museum tells the stories of the great glass inventors using video, text, artifacts and hands-on exhibits, such as a Navy periscope that can be swiveled to view Corning and its sylvan setting in western New York.

Unmistakable in the vista is the headquarters of Corning Inc., the company famous for its glass-science breakthroughs and mass production of light bulbs, liquid crystal displays, optical fiber and telescope mirrors.

The museum runs a “hot glass show” illustrating how a crystal vase is made using a furnace heated to 2,350 degrees Fahrenheit. The exquisite sculpture is then tossed back into the fire for recycling.

In another wing, however, is the world’s most comprehensive collection of glass objects, 30,000-plus items ranging from giant ornamental vases to mass-produced soda bottles.

Three innovation galleries trace the evolution of flat glass, glass vessels such as cathode-ray tubes and Pyrex flasks, and glass as a material that conducts light. One illuminating example: 4 ounces of optical fiber can deliver more telephone calls or Internet data than 33 tons of copper wire.

“Optical communications caught people’s imagination somehow--it had a life of its own from the beginning,” said Robert Maurer, 74, who along with Donald Keck and Peter Schultz developed optical fiber at Corning in 1970.

Optical fiber is rapidly replacing copper as the backbone of America’s telephone, cable television and computer networks. It also has found myriad uses in other fields, such as medicine.

“What was most important to me was to do something that had practical value for people in society,” Maurer said.

“The rest of this is nice,” he said with a chuckle, after seeing his image flickering in a documentary film in a corner of the museum. “But I’m not the kind of person who had that as my primary goal.”