Both glazed and confused Alexander Waugh reflects on the grand claims made for the influence of glass on human history

From: The Sunday Telegraph London | Date: August 4, 2002| Author: | Copyright information

The Glass Bathyscaphe: How Glass Changed

the World

by Alan Macfarlane and

Gerry Martin

Profile Books, pounds 15, 255 pp

pounds 13 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222

"BATHYSCAPHE" IS A word coined by the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard to describe a deep-sea diving bell that he invented in the 1940s. But that need not bother us here, for the Glass Bathyscaphe is not about this contraption - bathyscaphes are never even mentioned - it is a book about glass.

"How Glass has influenced Eurasian Civilisation, with a long meditation at the end on why bad eyesight among the Chinese and Japanese might ...

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