Revolutionary Breakthrough: The Invention of Laminated Glass

In 1903, French artist and chemist Edouard Benedictus happened upon an unexpected discovery after a laboratory accident. To his surprise, he accidentally knocked over a glass flask, which shattered but did not break into pieces. Upon further investigation, he found that the flask's interior had been coated with plastic cellulose nitrate film. Instead of breaking into shards as expected, the glass broke but stayed together due to this thin coating. This innovative material is now known as laminated or 'safety glass.' It wasn't until 1911 that Benedictus filed a patent for his safety glass design after realizing its potential when he heard about a car accident where passengers were injured severely by splintering windshield glass. His innovation significantly reduced these kinds of devastating injuries because when impacted, laminated glass cracks rather than disintegrate into dangerous shards. Following the process used in his fortuitous discovery years ago, laminated glasses are made even today by sandwiching a layer of plastic (usually polyvinyl butyral) between two layers of tempered glass. The bonding process occurs under heat and pressure. If broken, the interlayer keeps the layers of glass bonded even when broken, and its high strength prevents the glass from breaking up into large sharp pieces - a revolutionary concept for both automotive safety and architectural applications. Besides offering safety protection, it also gives sound insulation qualities due to the damping effect of the plastic layer in addition to UV-filtering properties since, under normal conditions, it blocks over 99% of harmful ultraviolet radiation. This unique, accidental discovery has made our cars and buildings safer and paved the way for other applications of laminated glass in eyewear, mobile phones, and even bullet-proof glass - thus saving countless lives over the past century. So, remember the accidental discovery of Edouard Benedictus while appreciating a windshield free from dangerous shards at a road bump or reading under sunlight behind a UV-guarded window!