JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1338

Glass is best left to its best uses–in lighting, decoration, ,chalcogenide glasses (in the construction of rw cds),
and even music (Beethoven, Mozart, Donizetti, Bach and many others have composed for the glass harmonica, armoinca, hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica)…and son on and on  But perhaps the use less thought of in general has been the use of glass as the conduit for aqueducts.

A 180-mile-long conduit.

I found this notice in the 20 January 1849 issue of Scientific American  The idea of making a glass pipe for transporting water to transport the special waters from Saratoga Springs, New York down to Manhattan, 180 miles away.  The backers for this plan were going to encase the glass piping in clay bricks, which makes sense of course, but then burying all of that in a coffin of cement…well, that present all sorts of problems if the pipe ever broke.There is some irony in the silica connection between the clay pipes the glass would’ve replaced and glass itself, but this is still just an awful idea.