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Show Glass Fibers Are Being Developed for Many Uses Neckties, Dresses, Drapes and Awnings By WATSON DAVIS GLASS is f amiliar as bottles or tumblers, window panes, and, more recently, as translucent building blocks. It is proverbially breakable and fragile. At first thought glass would not be judged a serious competitor to the ordinary textiles. Yet one of the most promising new uses for glass is as a fiber. Dresses, neckties and other novelties novel-ties can be made of glass fiber. But the early large scale practical usage of glass textiles is foreseen in drapes for use in theaters, hotels tapestries, awnings that can not be hurt by carelessly flung cigarettes and other such applications where real non-inflammability non-inflammability is necessary. Just now glass fibers are finding widest application as insulating material ma-terial both against heat and on electric wires and as a filtering material. A mat of glass fibers such as used in house walls or refrigerators refriger-ators weighs a mere hundredth of the volume of solid glass, IVi instead in-stead of 150 pounds per cubic foot. Can Be Tied in Knots If drawn sufficiently fine glass becomes be-comes flexible and can even be tied in knots. And the strength needed to pull glass apart increases as the fiber diameter is reduced, so that while typical strength of glass rods is 20,000 pounds per square inch, commercially produced fibers have gone as high as 2,000,000. Fibers as fine as 0.00005 inch in diameter have been produced. Continuous filaments fil-aments have been drawn without a break for 5,040 miles. Color? The natural white suffices for most purposes now, but soon glass textiles, competing with cotton, cot-ton, wool and rayon, will emerge in all rainbow shades, with more permanency per-manency than we expect from other textiles. For several centuries glass has been made into fiber for special purposes. The Germans made glass fiber commercially during the World war when blockades cut off supplies of asbestos. The modern American method dates from 1931 and now two large concerns are pushing research re-search on this stuff that a window pane would not recognize as a first cousin. |