The secret of making glass tough appears really to have
been discovered. M. Francois de la Bastie, a French engineer, after years of inquiry, has found that glass heated to a certain tem- perature, and passed for a moment through a prepared oil, also heated, loses its brittleness, becoming so tough that an 8-oz. iron weight, falling on a thin piece from a distance of 4 feet, only bounded off. Thin watch-glasses, or plates thrown across a room against a wall, fell spinning on the floor. When, however, the glass does break it breaks all at once into atoms, and the glazier's diamond makes no impression on it. It can, however, be cut with the wheel, and some simple method of cutting will speedily be devised, when the glass may be used for the commonest as well as the most elaborate purposes. The first use of the new material will propably be for stained-glass windows, but there will soon be no end to its application. The Times' reporter does not tell us whether it will stand great heat, a quality much wanted in lamp-chimneys.
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