History Of Glass & Windows

A history of glass and glazing

Glass and the art of window making goes back a long way and here you'll find a timeline of it's initial use and eventual widespread take-up. To enquire about any of our glazing products or services, please speak to our team at Heritage Glass & Glazing directly. We're based in London and cover Chelsea, Hampstead, Holland Park, Chiswick, Southgate and Watford.

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The discovery of glass

Glass has always been around and was initially used by humans in the formation of weaponry such as spears, courtesy of obsidian. It wasn't until around 4500 BC that the first manmade glass objects were being produced, albeit in the form of beads. Glass blowing, which is still used today, came about around 100 BC. However, the glass produced was coloured and obscured and its potential use in the formation of windows was never seriously entertained until the advent of colourless glazing around 100AD. After this breakthrough, the practical benefits of glass and its ability to let in light and make everyday activities that much easier to carry out became that much more apparent. But it was still difficult and costly to make and so it wasn't until around 1800 years later, amidst the Industrial Revolution and the advent of multiple mass production techniques, that glass and windows in particular became available to the masses.

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The advance of window making

Up until the late 19th century, windows were a symbol of wealth. The introduction of the Windows Tax, which involved taxing owners of properties variable rates depending on just how many windows their properties had, meant that a lot of property owners ended up boarding up their windows. Only the wealthiest members of society could afford to keep them in place. Even after the repeal of the tax, the slow nature of window production meant that they were still too expensive for the public at large. This changed in the early 19th century, when Britain imported an innovative technique for window production from Germany. This accelerated the process of production by a significant degree and so inevitably the cost of buying windows was reduced. This gradual reduction in price was compounded by the introduction of other mass production techniques in the early 20th century. By the latter half of the 20th century, the double glazed unit had been born. The rest - as they say - is history.

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