https://www.soulbottles.de/en/ultraglass
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulkupfer/ultraglass-s...
Recent update:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulkupfer/ultraglass-s...
The research for this was done at the University of Bayreuth: https://www.glas.uni-bayreuth.de/en/projects/strongbottles/i...
German TV reported about the background here, 20:45 onwards:
https://www.3sat.de/wissen/nano/240315-sendung-epigenetik-ar...
maybe the same reason [the super hard] prince rupert's drops explode. really high internal stress.
As I was making cocktails one evening I accidentally knocked an empty glass from my kitchen worktop onto my stone-tiled kitchen floor. I was astonished when the glass bounced on its rim and rebounded back up in the air. I somehow managed to catch it. Not the slightest damage. Five years later that glass is still in use.
I bought a box of 12 because that was the smallest quantity they came in, but normally only use two. So I think that box will last me for 20 years or more. They are incredible.
Invariably he'd miss one then many and be in a state of panic and yet none would break when hitting the kitchen floor.
Silly teenagers we were. I see that brand is still around. It's solid.
What a loaded headline.
corning the guys they bring up at the very end is also the company that did pyrex. they spun that business off in the 90s. They don't mention that because you'd recognize it and go "wait my cabinet's been full of that my whole life"
Most people involved in such projects were far from what you can call communists, not involved with regine, not members of the party (or if they were it was just to be allowed certain positions in the system, literal ticking checkbox on the requirements list), some even secretly hating it and conspiring against it. This reductionism is unnecessary and outright incorrect.
One can claim it was invented in communist East Germany (although the official name was literally German democratic republic), and thats about it.
You also slap 'invented by american capitalists' onto every single invention coming out of US of past 250 years?
Yes, you can get both of those things with capitalism, just look at Russia, but looks like they are more likely to happen with communism.
Authoritarianism is responsible for many people's deaths, while corruption is why things were so bad that it pushed for invention of this.
The reason why the glass is not popular right now is because we as consumers are perfectly fine with this. We let companies get away with it instead of voting with our wallets. Nearly all of us are guilty purchasing smart phones that won't last longer than 2 years, pre-paying for games when companies frequently stiffed us that way. Almost no one puts time to research which companies produce quality product so such manufacturers frequently go out of business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
Try criticising capitalism and you'll soon encounter exactly that rhetoric, even for things that exist only thanks to government direct action (the most socialist org in USA, the Department of Defense, is directly and indirectly responsible for huge part of innovation that people assign to "capitalism" despite it having little to do with it)
And that's nonsense. The real problem was the reunification and the collapse of the East German economy. The East Germans got rid of their government, peacefully and the result was the unification of a protected plan economy to an open social market system (West Germany did not and still does not have US style capitalism -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy ). The East German market was not having access to current technologies and raw materials (for example due to the lack of money to buy on the world market). The companies in the east were not competitive and they lost their protecting system.
There were LOTS of glass manufacturers, both in West Germany and in the surrounding countries. Those were eager to take the market and a small and expensive glass production was an easy victim. There are lots of examples where GDR products were replaced by Western products, which were much more efficient in production and distribution.
It has very little to do with "capitalism", just that there was a much larger and more efficient market around, eager to take over. The "communist" economy wasn't communist and it was behind a self-built "protective" wall. When the wall collapsed and the system which protected the wall collapsed (-> the whole eastern Europe incl. the former Soviet Union largely collapsed), then during reunification of East and West Germany, the East German economy also collapsed (products were no longer competitive, lost their markets, etc.). The West German companies did not have the time to protect small scale producers, their problem was to deliver on the expectations of the East Germans: create same living standards, provide access to the larger market without scarce products.
For the East German population it was mostly clear, they wanted to buy western products, which for a long time were either not available or far too expensive or both. East German brands were out of fashion.
The attraction of the West German economy and political system, together with the failure of the East German system (and its soviet-influenced model), caused the collapse of the political and economic system of the GDR.
Later the "Ostalgie" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie ) made people aware that there was also a loss: familiar brands were gone, familiar products were gone, jobs were gone, people were gone, (-> many went to West Germany to work there) western products were not always better, ...
TLDR; -> the company was a victim of the turmoil of the reunification and introduction of a larger&open economy.
Side note: that East Germans needed to take care of scarce products (see the cars which had long waiting lists) did not mean that the East German production was environmentally friendly. Just the opposite, East German production was as environmentally unfriendly or even more, as in the West. An environmental movement (like the Greens in West Germany) was not possible in the one-party-rules system of the GDR dictatorship. Later, a lot of production got closed(& sometimes replaced) because of old and dirty factories and production processes.
Side note 2: Germany now has a large scale "Mehrweg- und Pfandsystem" for bottles. This means that in any super market one can buy bottles of, say, beer and one pays a higher price. The markets are required to take back the empty bottles and pay the consumer the "Flaschenpfand" (bottle deposit). Bottles get reused a lot (50 times) and this system has 43% market share. One can imagine that lighter/more durable glass bottles might have an advantage in such a system. Currently we see either heavy glass bottles or lighter plastic bottles (reused 25 times).
This was already standard procedure in East Germany though, pretty much everything from glass bottles (via a "Pfandsystem" much the same as today's minus the deposit machines) to paper to scrap metal was recycled. We even had regular 'waste paper collections' at school which were organized like a competition. This had little to do with environmentalism but instead to get more independent from resource imports.
(as you mentioned, the environment was much worse off in East Germany than it is today, especially around industrial locations)
Wikipedia describes that here (in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SERO
Great! Where can i buy coke in this glass?
You can get old used Superfest glasses on ebay for 10$ per piece. That's sustainable capitalism: they don't get thrown away and the seller makes a great price.
Plus: you can get the original DDR/GDR design from 30 years ago and fill it with any beverage you want.
The most productive areas of Eastern Germany were private but Commies didn't like it so they shut it down in 70s. Hence Eastern Germany became poor.
Of course nobody in their right mind believed such bullshit (not even most party members).
Private companies were shut down a lot earlier than the 70's, more like the 50s and early 60s. Later this was relaxed again. It was actually possible again in the 80s to run a small privately owned business (my parents were both self-employed). A privately owned company in East Germany still doesn't mean that there's any competition though, or ability to be better off than a worker in a state-owned company. The entire economic enviornment just wasn't compatibly with the idea of running a business that's not controlled by the state.
Still, compared to some of the poorer Eastern European countries, East German people were somewhat well off. Maybe on a level like Portugal or Greece, but of course piss-poor when compared to West Germany. And in any case much worse when it comes to personal freedom of course (which was a much more critical problem than the economic problems).
Also, all those things don't change the fact that East German engineers sometimes came up with brilliant solutions despite the less than ideal conditions.
This doesn't have anything to do with capitalism, but apathy of consumers. The lack of durable products is because consumers don't value durable products enough to seek them out and pay more for them. In a communist or command economy, the exact same thing would happen if the leader decreed that goods needed to be cheaply made. There's nothing intrinsic to capitalism here.
The tempered glass is almost indestructible as well. I can only remember one time when one of them broke when I dropped it (like with Superfest it'd smash into a million pieces).
You regularly find similar Vereco glassware in thrift stores and flea markets. Mainly because it's almost indestructible. Mine are getting a bit scratched up by now so I'm considering getting new tableware but it's kind of hard replacing something that still works perfectly fine.
[1] Like this: https://l-art-copenhagen.com/products/526194
Incidentally. They seem to be close to bankruptcy (again) and to be looking for investors.
Y'all, it's called Corelle, and you can buy it literally everywhere. It's extremely available. Ubiquitous even. And it's just not worth it for the same reason given right there at the very end in the epilogue:
> While the Superfest glass is by far more durable than normal glass, when they shatter – they burst into a million fine pieces and are a total nightmare to clean up. I’m not sure if it’s because of their potassium chloride coating or because they are made to be super thin, my advice is to not drop them.
The reality is that the failure mode absolutely sucks. Dropping one and having it survive is a neat party trick, but all it takes is one break for the observer to completely swear off the experience forever.
Google "corelle exploded".
I'd much rather sweep up the equivalent of very coarse sand than deal with shards of glass. There's no need to keep the dog away, or wrap the stuff in a newspaper so you don't shred the bin bag etc. You just sweep it up and are done with it.
Corelle is also a product brand owned by said holding company and their still massively available primary products use their Vitrelle hardened glass material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corelle
not
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corelle_Brands
GM's bankruptcy was very similar to Instant Brands', and they haven't gone anywhere.
Likely there's a very mundane reason it hasn't replaced all standard glassware, such as being slightly more expensive or having limited design shapes/forms (thinking of the plates). This doesn't exactly strike me as "evil capitalism," just "throwaway culture". The difference is the consumer makes that choice when both options are available, but one is cheaper.
Nude Glass’s Stem Zero and Ghost Zero line of glassware is made of this stuff.
Ion-strengthened glassware is manufactured in at least Turkey (Nude glass), France (Duralex) and Portugal (closed the tab and don't remember).
There doesn't appear to be a US brand making glassware with the process, which is a shame. But the US is the leading manufacturer of ion-strengthened glass for technical products, supplying Asian brands. You probably have a piece of it in your pocket.
I think it's still possible to source this kind of glass as sheets – https://www.delphiglass.com/oceanside-compatible-glass-96-co... seems to come pretty close in appearance – but I can't seem to find anyone selling consumer products made out of it. (Unless they make replicas and sell them as "authentic Jugendstil ca. 1908")
This must be a pretty old article, as Fotoimpex have renovated and frustratingly removed almost their entire storefront - you can't really browse their merchandise anymore. I've found I have to order through their website despite the store being 30 mins away.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology...