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The History of Replacement Windows – Seeing
Out Through the Years
The history of replacement windows is a fairly
recent one. The replacement window industry has just got into
full swing in the last thirty years or so. But of course,
before we can have replacement windows, we would have to have
the first windows that needed replacing. So this history lesson
is based on the creation and development of glass panes, and
how they became an integral and necessary part of home construction.
They had windows before Christ
It seems the Romans and the Germans were responsible
for many inventions that have withstood the test of time.
Glass is no exception. The Romans learned how to make sheets
of glass around 400 B.C. but, since the climate was warm enough
that they didn’t need windows, they used their invention for
more extravagant things – like making drinking cups and jewelry.
Up north, in the colder climates, Germanic
tribes could have used these sheets of glass, but it took
hundreds of years before they actually adapted glassmaking
to their needs. In the Middle Ages, around 600 A.D., the Germans
established window manufacturing plants along the Rhine River.
Glassmaking was a high art
Good glassmakers were few and far between at
that time. It took a great amount of skill and a long apprenticeship
before a man was qualified to do the job properly. That’s
why they called a glassmaker a “gaffer” – German for “learned
grandfather”.
Glassmaking in those days was done in two ways.
The method that was most widely used, but produced inferior-quality
glass, was called the cylinder method, where the glassmaker
blew molten silica into a sphere and swung it back and forth
until it was shaped like a cylinder. Then they cut the cylinder
lengthwise and flattened it into a sheet.
The other method, called the crown method,
was a specialty among Normandy glassmakers. These craftsmen
also blew a sphere, but attached an iron rod to it before
cracking off the blowing iron, leaving a hole at one end.
Then they’d rapidly rotate the sphere, using centrifugal force
to expand the hole until the sphere opened into a disk. Crown
glass was thinner than cylinder glass and could only be used
for very small window panes.
Most windows made in those days were monopolized
by the huge cathedrals with their massive stained-glass windows.
From the churches, the use of window glass was gradually adopted
by the wealthy and then, eventually, by everyone else. The
biggest sheet of glass that could be made back then was about
four feet across. But by the 17th century, improvements in
glassmaking technology produced single panes of up to 13’
x 7’.
Then, in 1687, Bernard Perrot, a French gaffer
from Orléans, patented a new method of making plate glass.
He cast hot, molten glass on a large iron table and spread
it out with a heavy metal roller. This method produced the
first large sheets of relatively-undistorted glass, fit for
use as full-length mirrors.
A wind’s eye became a window
The actual word “window” has an interesting
derivation. It comes from two Scandinavian words, vindr and
auga, meaning “wind’s eye”. Early Norse carpenters didn’t
go to great lengths to build perfect houses. One thing they
omitted was allowance for ventilation. Throughout the long,
cold winters, with all the doors closed, the air in a house
got smoky and stale. So they made a small hole in the roof,
called an “eye”. The wind often whistled through the eye,
so they called it the “wind’s eye”. Later, builders from Britain
borrowed the Norse term and changed it to “window”. And eventually,
the hole that was designed to let in air was covered with
glass to keep it out.
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Choose an article to read
• Clearly
Divine
• Glass
Block Windows
• History
of Replacement Windows
• How
Replacement Windows Work
• Glossary
of Terms
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