Science in Glass: Material Pathologies in Laboratory Research, Glassware Standardization, and the (Un)Natural History of a Modern Material, 1900s–1930s

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, so-called "glass diseases" seriously affected the use of scientific and technical glassware. It had become apparent by 1900 that glass, a supposedly neutral and inert material, not only interacted with its environment but also interfered with anything it contained-chemically, physically, and biologically. Starting from the assumption that modern laboratory research depends on containers that regulate the spatial, material, and epistemic enclosure of its experimental milieus and objects, this essay argues that the standardization of glass quality from the 1900s to the 1930s must be understood as a reconfiguration of a "marginal" but nonetheless constitutive element of modern laboratory environments. The aim here is thus to weave various threads together into an (un)natural history of a modern material, one that considers epistemology, technology, and ontology-or, more specifically, the changing requirements and functions of glassware in the modern laboratory, the invention of specifically adapted glass substances, and the parallel advancement of glass science and its theories of what glass actually is.Kijan Espahangizi is a historian at the University of Zurich. His work focuses on the intersection of history of science and material history, as well as on the relation of knowledge and politics. He is the author of "Wissenschaft im Glas: Eine historische Ökologie moderner Laborforschung" (Ph.D. diss., ETH Zurich, 2010); coeditor (with Barbara Orland) of Stoffe in Bewegung: Beiträge zu einer Wissensgeschichte der materiellen Welt (Diaphanes, 2014); and coeditor (with Monika Wulz) of "The Political and the Epistemic in the Twentieth Century: Historical Perspectives," a special issue of KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge (Fall 2020).

The Nature of Glass: Technologies of Transparency, Materials on the Move

“…After the end of the war, in response, the Schott company adapted its specialty glass and collaborated with Bauhaus and Werkbund designers to develop kitchen glassware. 11 Following the shift away from the use of household and home-blown glass in the laboratory in the 1880s, then, the borosilicate glassware specifically developed for the laboratory flowed back to the household in the 1920s, turning the kitchen into the laboratory of the home.…”