Saturday, 10 August 2024

How East Germany invented ‘unbreakable’ drinking glasses

quote [ Dramatically increasing the toughness of the glass surface was possible, they found, by replacing the smaller sodium ions in the glass with electronically charged potassium ions.
[…]
The problem with the original Superfest glass is that its manufacturers worked with modified alumino or borosilicate glass ]

Not sure about the comeback in startups – timeless design though.
[SFW] [food & drink] [+3 Interesting]
[by Paracetamol@7:03pmGMT]

Comments

avid said @ 6:06am GMT on 11th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
We use similar glass every day. There's a good chance that you are looking at it right now, in the form of your Gorilla Glass device screen.

I really dislike planned obsolescence, but even I have to admit that it's not clear how you can have a glass plant producing unbreakable glasses that won't go out of business in 10-20 years, which then creates a market failure.

The same thought crosses my head whenever I see a fantastically durable tool still in use from the early or mid 1900's, often from a maker that has long since gone out of business.

And the subscription model everything is migrating to is also similar. You can still run a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 if you have it, but if Google decides to paywall Google Docs, you have to pay up whether they are adding features you care about or not.
Paracetamol said @ 6:30am GMT on 11th Aug
CRTs existed in a similar vein: as long as new screens had to be build, you could recycle the toxic parts of the old ones, but now, as they end up as trash you have to find a way to manage that waste. Written from a 10 y/o mobile device, BTW.
stv179 said @ 3:53am GMT on 12th Aug
It should be mentioned that the glass isn't unbreakable, though (similar to your phone's screen). It's estimated to have about ten times the lifetime of a regular glass.

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