The development of tempered glass can be traced back to the mid-19th century. A prince of the Rhine named Robert once conducted an interesting experiment in which he placed a drop of molten glass in cold water, resulting in an extremely hard glass. This high-strength granular glass is like a droplet of water, with a long and curved tail, known as the 'Prince Robert Small Grain'. But when the tail of Xiaoli was bent and broken, it was strange that the entire Xiaoli suddenly collapsed violently, even becoming a fine powder. The above method is very similar to the quenching of metal, which is the quenching of glass. This type of quenching does not cause any changes in the composition of the glass, so it is also called physical tempered, hence tempered glass is called tempered glass.
The first patent for glass tempering was obtained by the French in 1874. The tempering method involves heating the glass to a temperature close to the softening temperature and immediately immersing it in a relatively low temperature liquid tank to increase surface stress. This method is the early liquid tempering method. Frederick Siemens from Germany obtained a patent in 1875, while Geovge E. Rogens from Massachusetts in the United States applied the tempering method to glass wine glasses and lamp columns in 1876. In the same year, HughO'Heill of New Jersey obtained a patent.
In the 1930s, Saint Gobain in France, Trepulx in the United States, and Pilkington in the UK all began producing large area flat tempered glass for car windshields. Japan also carried out the production of tempered glass industry in the 1930s. From then on, the world began the era of large-scale production of tempered glass.
After 1970, Triplex Company in the UK successfully tempered glass with a thickness of 0.75~1.5mm using liquid medium, ending the history of physical tempering not being able to toughen thin glass, which was a major breakthrough in tempered glass technology.
The history of tempered glass in China began in 1955, with trial production at Shanghai Yaohua Glass Factory and successful trial production at Qinhuangdao Tempered Glass Factory in 1958. In 1965, Yaohua Glass Factory in Qinhuangdao began producing tempered glass for military purposes. In the 1970s, Luoyang Glass Factory was the first to introduce Belgian tempered equipment. During the same period, Shenyang Glass Factory put chemical tempered glass into production.
Since the 1970s, tempered glass technology has been widely promoted and popularized worldwide. Tempered glass has been used in fields such as automobiles, architecture, aviation, electronics, and more, especially in the fields of architecture and automobiles.
