Lee Love on sat 18 dec 04
Russel Fouts wrote:
>Many people have said that the reason why old glass is thicker at the
>bottom is because it was installed that way (someone even used the word
>naturally).
>
>Why would they have done this?
>
>
Hi Russel, I think we have to go back a couple assumptions....
To the thought that some people seem to be unquestioningly accepting:
That /all old glass is thick at the bottom of the pane. /Quote below:
> Some years ago, I heard a remark attributed to Egon Orowan of the
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Orowan had quipped that there
> might, indeed, be some truth to the story about glass flowing. Half of
> the pieces in a window arc thicker at the bottom, he said, but, he
> added quickly, the other half are thicker at the top. My own
> experience has been that for earlier windows especially, there is
> sometimes a pronounced variation in thickness over a distance of an
> inch or two on individualfragments. That squares with the experience
> of conservators and curators who have handled hundreds of panels.
> Although the individual pieces of glass in a window may be uneven in
> thickness, and noticeably wavy, these effects result simply from the
> way the glasses were made. Presumably, that would have been by some
> precursor or variant of the crown or cylinder methods.
and another:
> The Architectural Conservator at Old Williamsburg, Thomas Taylor, and
> David Colglazier, Conservator at Old Sturbridge Village, only heard of
> the flowing supercooled liquid stories recently and were skeptical,
> having believed for many years that the observed irregularities came
> from the glass manufacturing process.
Folks like Orowan and Brill have examined the glass in
question, and have noted that some panes actually have the thick edge at
the top. A localized temporal anomaly? Haha! I suppose that
could happen.
What is interesting to me, is that this is an example where an
explanation might meet all of our tests, from our personal experiences,
but yet, not be the truth. Sometimes, we just don't have sufficient
information to come up with the correct explanation. We have a lot
of faith in our own perceptions and that causes us to make many
mistakes. Questions are much more important than answers.
--
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Russel Fouts on sat 18 dec 04
Many people have said that the reason why old glass is thicker at the
bottom is because it was installed that way (someone even used the word
naturally).
Why would they have done this?
Russel
--
Russel Fouts
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