Sand and Glass, post 1

Interesting Facts and Figures from the book Sand by Michael Welland.

2009 Michael Welland:

~Earliest glassworks discovered: Nile Delta, 125o B.C.

~Discovery of glass not in Egypt (as Pliny describes in Natural History), but in Mesopotamia.

~Simple beads found in Iraq and Syria from 2300 B.C.

~Most of these beads were made in Venice: 1800's exported 6 million pounds of beads/year

~Resources of copper oxide, gold, and pure copper (additives to create color in glass) determined where the centers of glassmaking developed.

~"Cagoli" is Italian for pebbles. The Ticino river in NW Italy carries quartz glass and pebbles from the Alps which were used to make glass (no longer).

~Receded sea bed in Fontainebleau (outside of Paris) contains tracts of up to 100ft. thick white sand. (current source).

~1739, Jamestown, VA: Caspar Wistar (a German immigrant) brought over German glassblowers and opened a factory in NJ where there was lots of sand and oyster shells.

~The United States consumes well over eleven million tons of glass sand every year."

Welland, M. "Sand: The Never-ending story. University of California Press, 2009.