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Susan Cain, age ll,, of Salt Lake City,
Who discovered how to make glass?
The history of mankind dates from the time he discovered how to write and so record happenings and events. From that time, he was a very busy writer and somewhere almost all his doings have been recorded. We thiilk that manta written history dates from five or six thousand years aeoj but we have no definite day or year when it all began. The early scribes did not know how important their discovery would be to us. Most likely they had no idea that history was beginning with them. For these writers of the dawn of history were living in prehistory.
Our modern world seems vastly different from; say,, the world of Rome or the world of the pharoahs. But there i's no definite dividing line between all these historical eras. Life has gone on without break from day to day. Life also went on during all the long years of our dim and misty prehistory. In those far‑off days, man discovered the use of tools and fire. Someone invented the wheel. Weaving was invented and pottery ‑and someone invented glass. These inventions and discoveries helped mankind to improve himself.
As man improved, he was able to invent still more and better things. Look around at our up‑to‑date world. Our cars,and trains run on wheels* Our clothes are made from woven fabrics. We use fire to heat our homes and cook our food. Even the smelting which goes on in our great steel mills was invented before the dawn of history. Our splendid glass.‑welled buildings are built of material which man knew how to make, however clumsily, in the days of prehistory.
We owe a great debt of gratitude to those early inventors and it is a good idea, once in a while, to remember them with respect. In the days of Rome, man was waking up to his history.
Certain Roman writers set down some of the discoveries that happened in prehistory. They described how the magnet was discovered, how weaving was invented. Of course they could only write what had been handed down from the dim past by word of mouth. Much of it was fanciful and much of it was false. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder described how glass was discovered. His story may be true, but it certainly was wrong about when it happened.
The simplest glass is made by heating quartz stone and soda. Pliny says a band of sailors once spent the night on a sandy beach of Palestine. They built a hearth of lumps of nation! a shone which contains soda. The heat of the fire fused the nation with the quartz in the sand. In the morning they found lumps of clear glass in their campfire ashes.
According to Pliny, glass was discovered by accident ‑ and this may well be true, Chances are it was discovered and rediscovered in this way many times, But we know that men were making glass two or three thousand years before the days of Pliny. The Egyptians of 3500 years ago left fine glass objects in the tombs of their kings, The people of Mesopotamia left glass‑coated beads dating back 4500 years. The discovery of glass, then, belongs in that dim prehistory with so many of our everyday conveniences. Since its long ago invention, almost every generation has helped to make it more beautiful and more useful.