A vital substance to our development as a civilization
Glass is silicon dioxide. It formed naturally out in a desert somehow long ago. It was found in King Tut’s tomb. Glass begets (or at least, enables) this series of events:
- Glass is beautiful → glass is valuable
- Glass is valuable → Glassmaking becomes popular
- Glassmaking is dangerous → glassmakers are concentrated together
- Glassmaker concentration → glass innovations
- Glass innovations → clearer glass
- (unrelated: Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press is invented) → people realize they’re all far-sighted
- People have reason to correct far-sightedness + glass innovations → glasses are invented
- Glasses are invented → Microscopes & telescopes are invented
- Microscopes and telescopes increase human capacity for knowledge acquisition → further human understanding of sciences
- Glass + Metallurgy → mirrors are invented
- Mirrors become popular → people develop a sense of self unlike they had before
- Mirrors enable the invention of “perspective” art
— glass as a tool —
- Glass strands are found to be incredibly strong → fiberglass is created
- Ultra-clear glass + glass strands → Fiber-optic cables are possible & transcontinental internet is possible