Float Glass

Float glass is flat glass manufactured by floating molten glass on a bed of molten tin, a process developed by Alastair Pilkington and introduced commercially in 1959, which produces a perfectly flat, distortion-free sheet far more economically than the grinding and polishing plate glass previously required. Its introduction rapidly displaced older glass-forming methods and became the base material for essentially all modern architectural glazing, from ordinary windows to the large, optically clear panels used in contemporary curtain-wall and storefront construction, and it serves as the starting material that is subsequently tempered, laminated or coated for more specialized architectural glass products.