When was glass first created?
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Glass remained a luxury material, and the disasters that overtook Late Bronze Age civilizations seem to have brought glass-making to a halt. It picked up again in its former sites, Syria and Cyprus, in the 9th century BC, when the techniques for making colorless glass were discovered. The first glassmaking "manual" dates back to ca. 650 BC. Instructions on how to make glass are contained in cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. In Egypt glass-making did not revive until it was reintroduced in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Core-formed vessels and beads were still widely produced, but other techniques came to the fore with experimentation and technological advancements. During the Hellenistic period many new techniques of glass production were introduced and glass began to be used to make larger pieces, notably table wares. Techniques developed during this period include 'slumping' viscous (but not fully molten) glass over a mould in order to form a dish and 'millefiori' (meaning 'thousand flowers') technique, where canes of multicolored glass were sliced and the slices arranged together and fused in a mould to create a mosaic-like effect. It was also during this period that colorless or decolored glass began to be prized and methods for achieving this effect were investigated more fully.
History of glass
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The history of glass-making dates back to at least 3600 years ago in Mesopotamia. However, they may have been producing second-rate copies of glass objects from Egypt, where this complex craft originated. Other archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made in coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or Egypt. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid second millennium BC, were beads, perhaps initially created as the accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing. Glass products remained a luxury until the disasters that overtook the late Bronze Age civilizations seemingly brought glass-making to a halt.
History of glass
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One of Stookey's earliest innovations was FotoForm glass. The scientific community recognized its value around 1948. FotoForm glass is used in computer manufacturing and communications technology. A serendipitous invention made by Stookey in 1953 was when he took a piece of FotoForm glass and mistakenly heated it to 900 °C when he meant to heat it to 600 °C. When an oven thermometer was stuck on the higher temperature, Stookey had accidentally created the first glass-ceramic, Fotoceram. It was later known also as Pyroceram. This was the first glass-ceramic and eventually led to the development of CorningWare in 1957. CorningWare went to the consumer marketplace the next year in 1958 for cookware by Corning Glass Works and became just one of Stookey's multimillion-dollar inventions. It influenced the development of VisionWare, which is transparent cookware. VisionWare was patented by Corning Glass Works in 1966.
S. Donald Stookey
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Henry Willet created the first sculptured gold window between 1948-49. When first devised, the sculptured gold overlay was based on leaded stained glass windows. Later, faceted glass set in epoxy resin was used. These glasses, about an inch in thickness, but possibly up to two inches for special effects, contribute great brilliance of color under transmitted daylight. The sheet lead overlay is formed in relief by "repousse" (literally "beaten up from the underside") to give a sculptured effect, and is also incised with slits of varying widths to let the richly colored glass background shine through in the daytime. The fact that the sculptured lead surface has been "flown" with 23 carat gold leaf is the secret of the brilliant metallic night effect. The appearance of silver can also be obtained by the use of palladium leaf, which does not tarnish. The first gold window installed in a church, known as the "Glory Window", was designed by Henry Lee Willet and Marguerite Gaudin in 1951 for Westwood Community Church in Los Angeles, California.
Willet Hauser Architectural Glass
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Musical glasses were documented in Persia in the 14th century. The glass harp was created in 1741 by Irishman Richard Pockrich, who is known as the first virtuoso of the musical glasses. Pockrich called his instrument the "angelic organ" and it was played with sticks, rather than by rubbing the glasses with a moistened finger. It was reported in 1760 that, "Pockrich played Handel's "Water Music" on the glasses." His successful concert career was brought to a premature end by a fire in which both the inventor and instrument perished in 1759.
Glass harp
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Naturally occurring glass, especially the volcanic glass obsidian, has been used by many Stone Age societies across the globe for the production of sharp cutting tools and, due to its limited source areas, was extensively traded. But in general, archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made in coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt. Because of Egypt's favorable environment for preservation, the majority of well-studied early glass is found there, although some of this is likely to have been imported. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid-third millennium BC, were beads, perhaps initially created as accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing.
History of glass
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The creation of stained glass in Southwest Asia began in ancient times. One of the region's earliest surviving formulations for the production of colored glass comes from the Assyrian city of Nineveh, dating to the seventh century BC. The "Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna", attributed to the 8th century alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, discusses the production of colored glass in ancient Babylon and Egypt. The "Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna" also describes how to create colored glass and artificial gemstones made from high-quality stained glass. The tradition of stained glass manufacture has continued, with mosques, palaces, and public spaces being decorated with stained glass throughout the Islamic world. The stained glass of Islam is generally non-pictorial and of purely geometric design, but may contain both floral motifs and text. 
Stained glass, as an art form, reached its height in the Middle Ages when it became a major pictorial form used to illustrate the narratives of the Bible to a largely illiterate populace.
Stained glass
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In the late 1920s, Leo Moser (Moser glass-works Director General, 1916 to 1932) recombined praseodymium and neodymium in a 1:1 ratio to create his "Heliolite" glass ("Heliolit" in Czech), which has color-changing properties between amber, reddish, and green depending on the light source. This was one of a number of decorative glasses using rare earth colorants, with "Heliolit" and "Alexandrit" being the first two, introduced by Moser in 1929. Leo Moser's papers in the Corning Glass Museum make it clear that the first experimental glass melts done by Moser involving any of the rare earths occurred in November 1927. After a year of further development, the rare earth glasses were introduced to great acclaim at the Spring 1929 trade show in Leipzig. The Alexandrit and Heliolit names were registered as trademarks in June 1929. The earlier date of 1925 sometimes given for rare earth glass refers to an award for glass design, not glass composition.
Didymium
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In 1889 he developed Prior's glass, also known as Prior's Early English glass, a slab glass which is similar to the "luminosity and varied colouring of early medieval glass." 
It was made by blowing glass into a rectilinear box and then cutting off the sides. This yielded flat panes of uneven thickness, often streaked with colour. Whereas the prevailing style of glass relied on meticulous draughtsmanship and line control to create rich backgrounds of flat surface decoration such as gothic mouldings or foliage, the new glass could be used to create backgrounds with a more abstract pattern, as in the St Pancras roll of honour, or combined with lead alone to create bold and dramatic effects such as the wings of the four archangels at St Andrew's, Chippenham.
Edward Schroeder Prior
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The style of glassmaking changed by 1746 when the government passed the Glass Excise Bill, which taxed glass by weight; beginning in 1751 advertisements in a Boston newspaper made a reference to “new fashion” glass. Usually the phrase referred to the air twist stemmed glass or “wormed wine glasses” that had first been advertised in the Boston market in 1746. By 1761, glasses and decanters were also engraved or “flowered”. Glassmakers worked diligently to provide special glasses for specific purposes, and inevitably only the well-to-do could afford a full array of forms. The inventory of Governor Francis Fauquier’s glass is revealing, when the former Governor of Virginia died in 1768, he left: 5 beer glasses, 5 champagne glasses, 14 water glasses, 55 wine glasses, 59 syllabub glasses, 69 jelly glasses, 23 glass salvers, 15 decanters and 8 cruets. He also had three sets of salvers that made up into large pyramids; the largest pyramid was valued at £15. Such pyramids were advertised in the Boston press in 1772.
During the Federal Period, after the American Revolutionary War, Americans adopted new European styles. During the Revolutionary period, decoration was minimal. Although the American glass industry was making a strong beginning, considerable quantities were still imported. Cut glass was advertised in Baltimore as early as 1786, gaining popularity toward the end of the period. American production of blown three-mold glass began during the War of 1812. Glassmakers Henry William Stiegel and John Frederick Amelung had both tried to produce elaborate, fine table glass rivaling the European imports and both failed because there was not yet a market for the work they produced.
Early glassmaking in the United States