Laminated car glass is the norm in auto glass installation today. It makes windshield repair possible, saving on the cost of expensive total windshield replacement for minor chips or cracks. It also ensures the safety of people in vehicles, making it the choice when windshield replacement becomes inevitable. Even mobile windshield replacement is possible with laminated car glass. Of course, the most respected brands like Pilkington are made of laminated safety car glass.
Laminated safety car glass was developed by a French scientist, Edouard Benedictus, in 1903. According to reports, he actually discovered it because of a clumsy accident in his laboratory. The scientist was supposed to be on a ladder, reaching for materials from a high shelf, when he knocked off a glass flask. It fell to the floor and broke. Benedictus was surprised to see, however, that despite being broken, the glass pieces did not scatter. They remained attached to each other, still forming the contour of the flask. Upon questioning his assistant, Benedictus learned that the flask had contained a cellulose nitrate solution which had already evaporated. Cellulose nitrate is a liquid plastic and it left a thin plastic coating inside the flask, to which the glass had adhered.
The very same week, Benedictus heard of several car accidents where the drivers’ injuries were mostly caused by cuts from shattered car glass windshields. These accidents, in turn, motivated the scientist to put his new discovery to good use in saving lives. He lost no time in experimenting with glass coated with liquid plastic, shattering them and improving on the results.
The discovery of Benedictus was not immediately applied by automobile manufacturers for car glass windshields, though. Cost was given more importance over safety, even if automobiles were considered as luxury products.
Ironically, the first practical and wide scale application of Benedictus’ safety glass was not as car glass but as lenses for gas masks in World War I. It was easy and not very expensive to make small lenses from laminated safety glass. Because of this, military personnel enjoyed much better protection.
Only after having been proven in war was laminated safety glass finally recognized by car manufacturers as a necessary component for automobiles. Thus, laminated safety car glass was used for windshields.
Laminated safety car glass today is made of several layers of glass with sheets of plastic or resin in between. Much like Benedictus’ first creations, the plastic or resin bonded with the glass prevents the glass pieces from breaking into dangerous large pieces on impact. The glass, instead, shatters into a spiderweb pattern that remains attached to the lamination. This type of car glass has been used for many decades in various types of vehicles’ windshields, reducing harm to drivers and passengers alike.
