According to archaeological data, the earliest glass in China appeared in the late Spring and Autumn Period. Blue glass on Gou Jian's sword. The well-preserved Gou Jianjian, the King of Yue, unearthed from TombNo. Wang Shan 1 in Jiangling, Hubei, shocked the academic circles. The length of this sword is 55.7 cm, and it is rolled into a hoop shape, and eleven tiny concentric circles are cast inside. There are two lines of bird print inscription near the diamond-shaped dark lines of the sword body: "Qian Qiu (Gou Jian) of the State of Yue used a shrug (sword) at first sight".
When this sword was unearthed, the cold light was still very sharp. What surprises scholars who study ancient glass in China most is that the two sides of this sword lattice are inlaid with glass and turquoise, forming exquisite patterns. Only two pieces of inlaid glass are light blue and translucent, containing many small bubbles. The two pieces of glass have different shapes, one is a spherical crown, and the other is irregular, with a diameter less than 1 cm.
Gou Jian, the King of Yue, was the King of Yue at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, and his reign was from 496 BC to 464 BC. The sword of Gou Jian, the king of Yue, and the glass block embedded in it should also be from the late Spring and Autumn Period. Through proton X-ray fluorescence nondestructive analysis, it can be seen from the energy spectrum that the glass on the sword contains a certain amount of potassium and calcium. It is difficult to detect sodium because of the testing methods. So we can't be sure whether the glass contains sodium, but it certainly doesn't contain lead. It should be alkaline glass.
History of glass development:
The earliest glass manufacturer in the world was the ancient Egyptians. The appearance and use of glass has a history of more than 4000 years in human life. Small glass beads have been unearthed from the remains of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt 4000 years ago.
/kloc-in the 0/2 century, commercial glass appeared and began to become an industrial material. /kloc-in the 0/8th century, in order to meet the needs of making telescopes, optical glass was made. 1874, Belgium made flat glass for the first time. 1906, the flat glass is made in America. Since then, with the industrialization and scale of glass production, glasses with various uses and properties have come out one after another. In modern times, glass has become an important material in daily life, production and science and technology.
More than 3000 years ago, a European Phoenician merchant ship loaded with crystal mineral "natural soda" sailed on the Berus River on the Mediterranean coast. As the sea ebbed, the merchant ship ran aground, so the crew boarded the beach one after another. Some crew members also carry cauldrons and firewood, and use a few pieces of "natural soda" as the support of the cauldron to cook on the beach.
After the crew finished eating, the tide began to rise. They were about to pack up their things and go on sailing when someone shouted, "Come and see, there are some glittering and translucent things on the sand at the bottom of the pot!" " "