Wood, Paper, and Glass Transformed 197 



In the future, people can live in glass houses and not worry 

 about the result of throwing stones. John D. Biggers, presi- 

 dent of the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company, declares 

 that "houses with entire walls of transparent, insulating plate 

 glass that keeps heat in during winter and excludes it in sum- 

 mer will take their place in the world of tomorrow." 



Blankets of fiber glass have been used to insulate Army bar- 

 racks and Navy ships. Boards composed of compressed glass 

 fibers, and faced on one side with a glass-fiber cloth that can 

 be painted, are used on Navy fighting ships for both heat 

 insulation and interior finish. The board has replaced millions 

 of pounds of aluminum formerly required and in a period of 

 seven months saved enough aluminum to build more than 

 two hundred four-motored bombers. 



List the glass items that can replace metal ones in kitchens 

 and you have named almost everything in the kitchen. Flame- 

 proof glass saucepans, skillets, and double boilers replace 

 missing aluminum and scarce iron and enamel kitchenware. 

 More and more foods are packed in glass containers rather 

 than tin cans, saving three hundred thousand tons of steel and 

 tin for war equipment. Glass also makes knife sharpeners, 

 stoppers, traps for kitchen sinks, tabletops, bathroom acces- 

 sories, and washboards. 



Consider this incomplete list of the types of glass now per- 

 forming so brilliantly on the home and war fronts: 



Glass so hard it will stop a fifty-caliber bullet; glass that 

 can be sawed, drilled, and worked with carpenter's tools; glass 

 so light that it floats in water; glass wool so fine that a marble- 

 sized ball of glass will spin twenty miles of thread; explosion- 

 proof glass globes for use in war plants; glass that can be 

 heated red-hot and plunged into cold water without damage; 

 glass tubing that replaces copper, lead, and steel in plumbing; 

 glass that can be bent and tempered to almost any shape; glass 

 springs that don't get "tired" and are equal to steel ones; 



