Preface

For five millennia various glass objects were manufactured, initially as containers and mainly for holding food, oils, perfumes, or simply for decorative purposes. Initially Roman architecture and then the monumentality of medieval and Gothic religious art had a great artistic influence on flat glass. However the manufacturing process for producing flat glass constantly faced big problems. It was only with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution that sheets of glass could be produced that were large enough to allow more extensive use in architecture and throughout society in general. With glass, more than with any other material, art and technology have been merged in an exceptional way for millennia.

Notwithstanding the millenary glass history, glass science is quite new! Only in the last century the first structural glass theories come up. Even more recent are the non-traditional scientific glass studies. This book aims to give a brief introduction of the structure, properties and glass production methods of non-traditional glasses, at bachelor, master and PhD levels.

In this book foundation there is a team of several specialists of distinct Portuguese institutions, such as the Instituto Superior Técnico (ISTUL), Aveiro University (UA) and Azores University (Uaç). Despite the scientific edition of the work, it certainly reflects some level of heterogeneity in the approach chosen by each author.

The editors and the authors we would like to thank you the invitation and the vote of confidence in the publishers for the publication of:

Overall Aspects of Non-Traditional Glasses: Synthesis, Properties and Applications

Your commitment and effort in this production deserves our greatest appreciation.