Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: When was glass first created?
Glass remained a luxury material, and the disasters that overtook Late Bronze Age civilizations seem to have brought glass-making to a halt. It picked up again in its former sites, Syria and Cyprus, in the 9th century BC, when the techniques for making colorless glass were discovered. The first glassmaking "manual" dates back to ca. 650 BC. Instructions on how to make glass are contained in cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. In Egypt glass-making did not revive until it was reintroduced in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Core-formed vessels and beads were still widely produced, but other techniques came to the fore with experimentation and technological advancements. During the Hellenistic period many new techniques of glass production were introduced and glass began to be used to make larger pieces, notably table wares. Techniques developed during this period include 'slumping' viscous (but not fully molten) glass over a mould in order to form a dish and 'millefiori' (meaning 'thousand flowers') technique, where canes of multicolored glass were sliced and the slices arranged together and fused in a mould to create a mosaic-like effect. It was also during this period that colorless or decolored glass began to be prized and methods for achieving this effect were investigated more fully.
The Romans were renowned for their architecture, which is grouped with Greek traditions into "Classical architecture". Although there were many differences from Greek architecture, Rome borrowed heavily from Greece in adhering to strict, formulaic building designs and proportions. Aside from two new orders of columns, composite and Tuscan, and from the dome, which was derived from the Etruscan arch, Rome had relatively few architectural innovations until the end of the Republic.
In the 1st century BC, Romans started to use concrete widely. Concrete was invented in the late 3rd century BC. It was a powerful cement derived from pozzolana, and soon supplanted marble as the chief Roman building material and allowed many daring architectural forms. Also in the 1st century BC, Vitruvius wrote "De architectura", possibly the first complete treatise on architecture in history. In the late 1st century BC, Rome also began to use glassblowing soon after its invention in Syria about 50 BC. Mosaics took the Empire by storm after samples were retrieved during Lucius Cornelius Sulla's campaigns in Greece.
The mercury-in-glass or mercury thermometer was invented by physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in Amsterdam (1714). It consists of a bulb containing mercury attached to a glass tube of narrow diameter; the volume of mercury in the tube is much less than the volume in the bulb. The volume of mercury changes slightly with temperature; the small change in volume drives the narrow mercury column a relatively long way up the tube. The space above the mercury may be filled with nitrogen gas or it may be at less than atmospheric pressure, a partial vacuum.
Invented in 1892 by Sir James Dewar, a scientist at Oxford University, the "vacuum flask" was not manufactured for commercial use until 1904, when two German glass blowers, "Reinhold Burger" and "Albert Aschenbrenner," formed Thermos GmbH. They held a contest to name the "vacuum flask" and a resident of Munich submitted "Thermos," which came from the Greek word "therme," meaning "heat."
Refractors were the earliest type of optical telescope. The first practical refracting telescopes appeared in the Netherlands about 1608, and were credited to three individuals, Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, spectacle-makers in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar. Galileo Galilei, happening to be in Venice in about the month of May 1609, heard of the invention and constructed a version of his own. Galileo then communicated the details of his invention to the public, and presented the instrument itself to the Doge Leonardo Donato, sitting in full council.
The earliest known telescope appeared in 1608 in the Netherlands when an eyeglass maker named Hans Lippershey tried to obtain a patent on one. Although Lippershey did not receive his patent, news of the new invention soon spread across Europe. The design of these early refracting telescopes consisted of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. Galileo improved on this design the following year and applied it to astronomy. In 1611, Johannes Kepler described how a far more useful telescope could be made with a convex objective lens and a convex eyepiece lens and by 1655 astronomers such as Christiaan Huygens were building powerful but unwieldy Keplerian telescopes with compound eyepieces.
The vacuum flask was designed and invented by Scottish scientist Sir James Dewar in 1892 as a result of his research in the field of cryogenics and is sometimes called a Dewar flask in his honour. While performing experiments in determining the specific heat of the element palladium, Dewar made a brass chamber that he enclosed in another chamber to keep the palladium at its desired temperature. He evacuated the air between the two chambers, creating a partial vacuum to keep the temperature of the contents stable. Through the need for this insulated container James Dewar created the vacuum flask, which became a significant tool for chemical experiments and also became a common household item. The flask was later developed using new materials such as glass and aluminum; however, Dewar refused to patent his invention.
The earliest known example of cobalt aluminate glass dates to a lump from about 2000 BC in ancient Mesopotamia, very possibly intended for use as a pigment; it was rare until the modern era. Cobalt oxide smalt appears as a pigment in Egyptian pottery about five centuries later, and soon after in the Aegean region, and this is the pigment normally known as "smalt". In paintings, smalt has a tendency to lose its colour over a long period, and is little used today. However, when used in ceramics for underglaze decoration, it keeps its colour well, and is the main blue used in blue and white pottery from a wide range of dates and areas, including Chinese blue and white porcelain from the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Renaissance Italian maiolica and Delftware.
Chinese porcelain used smalt glazes from the Tang dynasty onwards, though Chinese cobalt glass is found from the Zhou dynasty (1122–221 BC). Cobalt was used as a pigment in Central Asia from the 13th century. A fragment of a mud painting in the ancient Tangut city of Khara-Khoto has been found to contain smalt, judged to be dated between the 11th and 13th centuries. A large quantity of smalt was purchased for the decoration of the gallery of Francis I of France at Fontainebleau in 1536. Smalt, normally now discoloured, is common in European paintings from the 15th to 17th centuries. For example, it is found in Hans Holbein the Younger's portrait of Sir William Butts (ca. 1540), in Michael Pacher's painting "The Early Fathers' Altar" (ca. 1483), and in the frescos of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494).
From the beginning, wristwatches were almost exclusively worn by women, while men used pocketwatches up until the early 20th century. The concept of the wristwatch goes back to the production of the very earliest watches in the 16th century. Some people say the world's first wristwatch was created by Abraham-Louis Breguet for Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, in 1810. Elizabeth I of England received a wristwatch from Robert Dudley in 1571, described as an arm watch. By the mid nineteenth century, most watchmakers produced a range of wristwatches, often marketed as bracelets, for women.
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.
Metal tools first appeared in Wales about 2500 BC, initially copper followed by bronze. The climate during the Early Bronze Age (c. 2500–1400 BC) is thought to have been warmer than at present, as there are many remains from this period in what are now bleak uplands. The Late Bronze Age (c. 1400–750 BC) saw the development of more advanced bronze implements. Much of the copper for the production of bronze probably came from the copper mine on the Great Orme, where prehistoric mining on a very large scale dates largely from the middle Bronze Age. Radiocarbon dating has shown the earliest hillforts in what would become Wales, to have been constructed during this period. Historian John Davies, theorises that a worsening climate after around 1250 BC (lower temperatures and heavier rainfall) required more productive land to be defended.
Cast iron was first produced in China during 5th century BC, but was hardly in Europe until the medieval period. The earliest cast iron artifacts were discovered by archaeologists in what is now modern Luhe County, Jiangsu in China. Cast iron was used in ancient China for warfare, agriculture, and architecture. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron (in this context known as pig iron) using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel.
Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia (cuneiform script) and Egypt (hieroglyphs) developed the earliest viable writing systems.
The overall period is characterized by widespread use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction and development of bronze technology were not universally synchronous. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques. Tin must be mined (mainly as the tin ore cassiterite) and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of extensive use of metals and of developing trade networks (See "Tin sources and trade in ancient times"). A 2013 report suggests that the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to the mid-5th millennium BC in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik (Serbia), although this culture is not conventionally considered part of the Bronze Age. The dating of the foil has been disputed.
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered to be the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC with the earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion. A similar debate exists for the Chinese script, which developed around 1200 BC. The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others Olmec and Maya scripts) are generally believed to have had independent origins.
Before there was the thermometer, there was the earlier and closely related thermoscope, best described as a thermometer without a temperature scale. A thermoscope only showed the differences in temperatures, for example, it could show something was getting hotter. However, the thermoscope did not measure all the data that a thermometer could, for example an exact temperature in degrees. What can be considered the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, was invented by German-Dutch scientist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (who had settled in Amsterdam in 1701) in 1714. Fahrenheit invented the first truly accurate thermometer using mercury instead of alcohol and water mixtures. He began constructing his own thermometers in 1714, and it was in these that he used mercury for the first time.
In 2001, Pilkington Glass announced the development of the first self-cleaning windows, Pilkington Activ™, and in the following months several other major glass companies released similar products. As a result, glazing is perhaps the largest commercial application of self-cleaning coatings to date. All of these windows are coated with a thin transparent layer of titanium dioxide. This coating acts to clean the window in two stages, using two distinct properties: photocatalysis and hydrophilicity. In sunlight, photocatalysis causes the coating to chemically break down organic dirt adsorbed onto the window. When the glass is wet by rain or other water, hydrophilicity reduces contact angles to very low values, causing the water to form a thin layer rather than droplets, and this layer washes dirt away.
In 1714 Dutch scientist and inventor Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first reliable thermometer, using mercury instead of alcohol and water mixtures. In 1724 he proposed a temperature scale which now (slightly adjusted) bears his name. He could do this because he manufactured thermometers, using mercury (which has a high coefficient of expansion) for the first time and the quality of his production could provide a finer scale and greater reproducibility, leading to its general adoption. In 1742, Anders Celsius (1701–1744) proposed a scale with zero at the boiling point and 100 degrees at the freezing point of water, though the scale which now bears his name has them the other way around. French entomologist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur invented an alcohol thermometer and temperature scale in 1730 that ultimately proved to be less reliable than Fahrenheit's mercury thermometer.
Cobalt blue in impure forms had long been used in Chinese porcelain, but it was independently discovered as a pure alumina-based pigment by Louis Jacques Thénard in 1802. Commercial production began in France in 1807. The first recorded use of "cobalt blue" as a color name in English was in 1777. The leading world manufacturer of cobalt blue in the 19th century was Benjamin Wegner's Norwegian company Blaafarveværket ("blue colour works" in Dano-Norwegian). Germany was also famous for production, especially the blue colour works ("Blaufarbenwerke") in the Ore Mountains of Saxony.
Langenheim invented a technique in 1846 for coloring daguerreotype plates and was issued a patent for it. With his brother in 1849 Langenheim used a photography technique invented by Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor which produced negative lantern glass slides. They renamed it "hyalotype" photography and patented it in 1850. The hyalotype glass slides were produced by an albumen process and were used for views of historic buildings in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. These slides were also used in portraits of famous Americans. In 1850, Langenheim with his brother introduced stereoscopy and were the first Americans to sell stereocards to the public. Langenheim and his brother were the first to produce stereographs commercially in America. They operated the American Stereoscopic Company from about 1850 to 1860 in Philadelphia.
The Copper Age is the early part of the Bronze Age. Bronze is made when tin is added to copper and brass is copper with zinc. Copper came into use before 5,000 BC and bronze around 3,100 BC, although the times vary by region. Copper and bronze were used for the same types of tools as stone such as axes and chisels, but the new, less brittle, more durable material cut better. Bronze was cast into desired shapes and if damaged could be recast. A new tool developed in the copper age is the saw. Other uses of copper and bronze were to "harden" the cutting edge of tools such as the Egyptians using copper and bronze points for working soft stone including quarrying blocks and making rock-cut architecture.
In 1654, Otto von Guericke invented the first vacuum pump and conducted his famous Magdeburg hemispheres experiment, showing that teams of horses could not separate two hemispheres from which the air had been partially evacuated. Robert Boyle improved Guericke's design and with the help of Robert Hooke further developed vacuum pump technology. Thereafter, research into the partial vacuum lapsed until 1850 when August Toepler invented the Toepler Pump and Heinrich Geissler invented the mercury displacement pump in 1855, achieving a partial vacuum of about 10 Pa (0.1 Torr). A number of electrical properties become observable at this vacuum level, which renewed interest in further research.
Henry Willet created the first sculptured gold window between 1948-49. When first devised, the sculptured gold overlay was based on leaded stained glass windows. Later, faceted glass set in epoxy resin was used. These glasses, about an inch in thickness, but possibly up to two inches for special effects, contribute great brilliance of color under transmitted daylight. The sheet lead overlay is formed in relief by "repousse" (literally "beaten up from the underside") to give a sculptured effect, and is also incised with slits of varying widths to let the richly colored glass background shine through in the daytime. The fact that the sculptured lead surface has been "flown" with 23 carat gold leaf is the secret of the brilliant metallic night effect. The appearance of silver can also be obtained by the use of palladium leaf, which does not tarnish. The first gold window installed in a church, known as the "Glory Window", was designed by Henry Lee Willet and Marguerite Gaudin in 1951 for Westwood Community Church in Los Angeles, California.
The creation of stained glass in Southwest Asia began in ancient times. One of the region's earliest surviving formulations for the production of colored glass comes from the Assyrian city of Nineveh, dating to the seventh century BC. The "Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna", attributed to the 8th century alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, discusses the production of colored glass in ancient Babylon and Egypt. The "Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna" also describes how to create colored glass and artificial gemstones made from high-quality stained glass. The tradition of stained glass manufacture has continued, with mosques, palaces, and public spaces being decorated with stained glass throughout the Islamic world. The stained glass of Islam is generally non-pictorial and of purely geometric design, but may contain both floral motifs and text. 
Stained glass, as an art form, reached its height in the Middle Ages when it became a major pictorial form used to illustrate the narratives of the Bible to a largely illiterate populace.
One of Stookey's earliest innovations was FotoForm glass. The scientific community recognized its value around 1948. FotoForm glass is used in computer manufacturing and communications technology. A serendipitous invention made by Stookey in 1953 was when he took a piece of FotoForm glass and mistakenly heated it to 900 °C when he meant to heat it to 600 °C. When an oven thermometer was stuck on the higher temperature, Stookey had accidentally created the first glass-ceramic, Fotoceram. It was later known also as Pyroceram. This was the first glass-ceramic and eventually led to the development of CorningWare in 1957. CorningWare went to the consumer marketplace the next year in 1958 for cookware by Corning Glass Works and became just one of Stookey's multimillion-dollar inventions. It influenced the development of VisionWare, which is transparent cookware. VisionWare was patented by Corning Glass Works in 1966.
In 1889 he developed Prior's glass, also known as Prior's Early English glass, a slab glass which is similar to the "luminosity and varied colouring of early medieval glass." 
It was made by blowing glass into a rectilinear box and then cutting off the sides. This yielded flat panes of uneven thickness, often streaked with colour. Whereas the prevailing style of glass relied on meticulous draughtsmanship and line control to create rich backgrounds of flat surface decoration such as gothic mouldings or foliage, the new glass could be used to create backgrounds with a more abstract pattern, as in the St Pancras roll of honour, or combined with lead alone to create bold and dramatic effects such as the wings of the four archangels at St Andrew's, Chippenham.