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Show f - ' ..... 1 Hiii- : - . I rss V sssl : ... (. 5 1 . I II i " J 1, I 1 - i-. , : .. ( i i 5- ' j. f : I, ? .. . V t - . j! ; r . ff : ...... ; V ' , , - - . ; fi ' " - " ' HIS JOB IS TO BREAK GLASS . Dearborn, Mich. This man's job is to break glass. He's been at it for years. Yet he keeps on breaking it, trying to find a kind of glass that will bend instead of break. After the first success with a glass that would break in a way that would not leave jagged edges, continued experiments have produced pro-duced a glass which will crack and bend but not smash into dangerous cutting edges. In the 1920s, when the jagged glass in broken windshields was a major menace in even minor accidents, the Ford Motor Company pioneered pio-neered safety glass in automobiles. automo-biles. This picture, taken at that company's glass plant, shows a 2-pound 2-pound ball falling five feet upon a piece of safety glass. The glass merely cracks slightly. There is a newer glass now which will withstand the ball dropping 16 feet. This glass has a rubber-like quality and bends slightly when hit. Ordinary plate glass of quarter-inch quarter-inch thickness shatters into jagged jag-ged pieces when the balls drop only 18 inches. Safety glass is made on the sandwich principle. This principle is to place betweeen two layers of glass a sheet of plastic known as vinyl. Glass and plastic are formed into one' unit under heat and pressure. |