The Butler weekly times. (Butler, Mo.) 1881-1918, 1907-04-04
MAKE QUARTZ GLASS
WASHINGTON SCIENTISTS DIS
COVER NEW PROCESS.
Feat Achieved by Carnegie Laboratory
Workers After Many Fruitless Es-
-peEiEnents-Aalue- of the New
Product.
Product.

Neutrality-suspicious. of the most i'm.
portant commercial developments
from the work OF the Carnegie geo.
physical laboratory in Washington is
the possibility of manufacturing quartz
glass.
DIR. Arthur L. Day and E. S. Shep-
herd are the two men who have
achieved the feat They do not take
any interest In the commercial posi-
bllities of the matter. DIR. Day, for in
stance, says that they have shown
that the thing can be done, and now
II commercial company wants to
take 1t up it can do so, all of the facts
having been made public in the scien-
tiiic press and before learned societies,
SO that there is no possibility of any
one getting a patent on IL.
The value of quartz glass over ordi'
nary glass is that II can be heated To
a temperature of about 1000 degrees
Centigrade without softening, and its
expansion under any ordinary heat is
SO tritling as to be almost a negligible
quantity. 1t also can be leated al
most red hot and plugged into cold
water without cracking and has the
peculiar property of allowing the pas
sage of the ultra violet light rays,
making it remarkably valuable in pho
Biography.
The value of quartz glass had been
recognized for long time, and owing
to the cncapness of German labor ii
had been manufactured in a way for
laboratory use in the form of tubes
| hy heating small clear quartz crystals
| and sticking them together The
| tubes and other vessels thus built NJ
were rough. Notwithstanding affairs
! but served number of useful pur
| poses However, there was no way
! Of manufacturing the substance into
| glass sheets of any size because ran
! dom masses of broken quartz could
| not bC fused together without having
the resultant glass full of air bubbles
The workers of the Carnegie labora
| tory tried all sorts of methods, II
the quartz was intensely heated free
silicon was deposited on the inside OF
the air bubbles, and the glass was
spoiled in two ways, instead of one
which was a.plenty. The final Solu
| ton of the problem was found in heat
ing the quartz to tho melting point
about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, and
| then subjecting it to an air pressure
OF between 400 and 500 pounds. After
| this it was allowed to gradually cool
| The air pressure squeezed out the all
| bubbles, and the result was a solid ant
clear mass of quartz glass. The plates
that have so far been made are only
about three by five by half an inch II
size. The bubbles are few, not ovel
one.half a millimeter in diameter, anC
are not frequent enough to interfere
with the use of the glass for lenses
mirrors and other optical work. The
experimenters think that little more
skill and experience would enable
them to make the glass entirely free
from flaws.
The value Of the glass in photo
graphic work is due, as has been said
to its property of allowing the pas
sage of the ultraviolet rays, which
are the rays that do the actual wort
in photography. In this connection
the glass will be peculiarly valuable
for the Cooper-Hewitt incandescen
light tubes, such as are now in us
in the post Office building. Thes
tubes are very valuable now for pho
tographic work, but with the quart
glass tubes they will be immensel
more so.
The glass, when it is once made
can be blown or pressed or cut lik
ordinary glass. II takes muc
higher degree of heat to handle 1t, tn
oxyhydrogen blow-pipe having to b
used, while the material has to b
worked much more quickly than ord
nary glass.
As to the cost Of the process, D.
Day would attempt no estimate, mere
ly saying that they had spent grea
deal of money in doing as much a
they had done, but that probably If tn
thing were done on commercial seal
and a larger unit Of production adop
ed the cost would be considerably r,
duced.
The cylinder where the glass
made is a powerful iron bomb" line
with graphite, and one Of the problem
in working on a larger scale would b
to secure larger sheets Of graphite Il
this lining. These sheets could be SUI
piled only by one Of the big companie
now operating at Niagara.
WOMAN SINGS self TO pEATt
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