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East Germany invented 'unbreakable' drinking glasses

512 points by n1b0m 2y ago

varshithr 2y ago
There's an excellent youtube video that discusses this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvBpjCOBu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvBpjCOBu0
- voidey 2y ago
  Indeed, was going to share that but you already did.
- mannykannot 2y ago
  This video makes the point that the technology was also developed by Corning (allegedly independently, though I am skeptical that it independently came up with the concept, given that the video claims that the Superfest process was patented), which was likewise unsuccessful in finding a market for it until Apple came looking for a tough screen for its iPhone.
torginus 2y ago
Here's a video of a guy dropping said unbreakable glass 3 times and breaking it: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NIAbt_GxPsg https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NIAbt_GxPsg The problem with unbreakable glass is once it hits a really hard material, like a grain of quartz, or a ceramic fragment, it breaks just the same.
- Tepix 2y ago
  It doesn't have to be perfect, as long as it lasts much longer it's already a big win.
  - ta1243 2y ago
    Is it? Based on what metric. If a glass costs €1 and lasts 1 year, and an unbreakable glass costs €10 and lasts 5 years, that's not a big win.
    - dotancohen 2y ago
      Not if going out and buying the glasses takes time, or if storing additional spare glasses takes precious space, or cleaning the broken glass takes workers' time, or if the broken glass could be a hazard, or there may be supply issues with getting the same uniform glasses years later, or any other number of reasons.
      - signatoremo 2y ago
        Oh the new version of the glasses will be cheaper, more durable, lighter, more energy efficient to make. The point remains, longer lasting glasses may or may not be superior.
        pixelfarmer 2y ago
        It is all about metrics and how you bend them to whatever you prefer. However, the more this deviates from actual reality, the more likely reality will eventually show up and bust the show in the most horrible way possible.
        dotancohen 2y ago
        You don't know that when making the initial purchase.
    - xnickb 2y ago
      The article talks about sustainability, so clearly Euro isn't the unit to measure that.
      - ta1243 2y ago
        Ideally the cost would include all externalities and thus allow people to judge the value and bare the full cost. But kWh, or grammes of glass, or carbon credits, or whatever you want. Normal glass is very recyclable and doesn't require a lot of energy or resource to recycle. "Long life" glass may well not be recycled at all.
  - cess11 2y ago
    I have a few glasses with handles from the fifties (or as far back as the twenties, there's no stamp on them) that are quite brittle and will for sure break at the bottom if you pour hot water in them. Seems to me like they last long enough when taken care of, and in situations where you don't the "unbreakable" glass splinters into a rather nasty dust like material.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      I like the drinking glasses from hardened glass. When they break, they shatter into a lot of almost cubic pieces, not into little syringe like splinter like regular glass.
  - mytailorisrich 2y ago
    I suspect that waste produced by broken glasses is so minuscule compared to the overall glass production/waste that this is largely irrelevant. Edit: Apparently glass cookware and drinking glasses are often not recyclable. This seems like a more important aspect to improve than durability even if, again, still overall a small improvement compared to overall glass industry.
    - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
      Broken glasses in bars, for example, have a lot more impacts than just waste. Broken glass has to be cleaned up, causes injuries, even causes lost product in some situations. I was in a cocktail bar once with three friends who ordered us the same chilled cocktail, served there day in, day out, and as the cocktails were poured into the glasses, three of the four glasses broke. Plink, plink, plink. Glasses too hot, cocktail too cold, some other handling problem. Who knows. But tougher glass might not have done that.
      - mytailorisrich 2y ago
        That sounds like clutching at straws while not really showing how that'd make a significant difference to anything. Make all glasses recyclable. Probably more important but less marketable for a new startup idea...
        ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
        I don't think it is "clutching at straws" for a bar to want glasses that break less frequently, causing fewer safety concerns, and to be prepared to pay the extra, but whatever.
        inglor_cz 2y ago
        A friend used to work in a student bar as a bartender. Broken glass was legitimately a safety issue. Drunken people can cut themselves quite creatively, including severed sinews. Ironically, most of his patrons were medical students.
- forinti 2y ago
  Short tangential story: My grandfather many decades ago came home with a pack of "unbreakable" glasses. My grandmother asked why he had bought them. He shrugged and replied "well, if you don't want them..." and threw them all on the floor. They all broke, of course. My grandmother was not amused. She was a very serious person. The rest of the family is still laughing on 60 years later.
  - sumtechguy 2y ago
    My aunt did that with a corningware plate. "This is unbreakable" then proceeded to yeet it on the concrete floor covered in linoleum. It was quiet an impressive splash of splinters everywhere. Shatter resistant is a better term. :) Or as Jerryrigeverything says 'glass is glass'.
    - theluketaylor 2y ago
      My mother did the exact same thing. When I was a kid we hosted a 3 refugee sisters who were new to Canada. Despite a significant language barrier my mother tried to explain the dinnerware was unbreakable and they didn't need to worry about it too much. She tossed a plate on the floor to demonstrate. It landed on edge and shattered everywhere. The poor refugees were so confused about why this white woman has just destroyed a perfectly good plate.
leeoniya 2y ago
discussed 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399
- TheRealPomax 2y ago
  That's a completely different article.
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  It was discussed here even more recently than that.
veltas 2y ago
In the UK, and I suspect elsewhere, pub glasses are manufactured to indicate their age as they're meant to be replaced regularly. Often in pubs you can see they've far outlived their proper life, if you know what to look for, and are covered in etches from repeated washes. Clearly glasses last a long time, I don't think smashing is the kind of issue they're making it out to be. These hardened glasses are sharper when they smash. They tend to smash after a few drops, but more drops than normal glasses. They solve a historical problem from East Germany: lack of resources to make glass, which is no longer a problem. Normal glasses are recyclable. EDIT: No apparently they are not, so maybe that's useful?
- Xeyz0r 2y ago
  [dead]
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >pub glasses are manufactured to indicate their age Why? This just sounds like planned obsolescence. >as they're meant to be replaced regularly Why? Is it a real hygrine problem or something?
  - scott_w 2y ago
    It's likely the washing process still scratches the glass but it's less visible. It doesn't increase the "safe" life of the glass, as bacteria is still able to get into those scratches. Making the scratches obvious makes clear to the pub landlord that they need to be replaced (and tips patrons off so they'll put pressure on the landlord by not coming back).
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      >It's likely the washing process still scratches the glass but it's less visible. It doesn't increase the "safe" life of the glass, as bacteria is still able to get into those scratches. Honestly, I've never heard of this before and I have friends working in the restaurant industry. Is it a real documented health hazard or a FUD spread by the glass manufacturers to create perpetual demand for their product (Glass As A Service)? My grandma still uses the same glassware from like 30+ years ago and washes it by hand and it doesn't look tarnished at all. Is she and our family likely to die from drinking from those old glassware with micro scratches?
Waterluvian 2y ago
Maybe there’s a way to double layer the part you hold with a pocket of air for insulation. Anecdotally, many people hold glasses poorly for fear of warming their drink with their hand.
- bux93 2y ago
  Double walled glasses exist, they are used for tea or frothy coffee. The glass is very thin though; the trade-off being that if it was regular thickness it would be very heavy and big relative to the contents - and your hands. This makes them even more likely to break! However, the brand Bodum do nice onces made from Borosilicate Glass.
willguest 2y ago
> The glasses are too good for pure market thinking. A demonstration that the economy isn't economical at all, when it comes to resources.
- vasco 2y ago
  It's the opposite, it makes no sense to build something forever. You have no clue what people will want or need in the future. If you make a bunch of forever glasses and in 50 years nobody wants to use glass containers anymore (or at least the ones you made), you just wasted a bunch of resources and energy making them last longer than they needed. Specially due to changing "taste" people want to change the items they use frequently. You can imagine other reasons why we shouldn't make products last forever, it's a huge over-investment of limited resources that could be used in the future for better things. Specially in a planet with limited resources but continuously evolving technology, it is really not good to make forever stuff unless the technological innovation stops. Because you could use the same resources later to do better stuff at the same cost. What we should do is wherever possible make things repairable and prosecute anyone that intentionally makes something harder to repair (not really applicable to glass, where recycling is the only option).
  - immibis 2y ago
    So let's make things that only last a day because you never know what tomorrow will bring.
    - eru 2y ago
      Are you familiar with the concept of trade-offs?
      - malermeister 2y ago
        Sure. Do you see glassware not being in use at any point in the next 100 years though?
JR1427 2y ago
I remain to be convinced. We rarely smash glasses in my household. Normal glass is (presumably) cheaper and less resource intensive than this special glass. Sometimes making things less durable actually is better. Over engineering and special manufacturing has costs.
- JR1427 2y ago
  Also, if 120m were made, but they are now fetching 30+ dollars, then there can't be that many around anymore, so are they really that long-lived? It doesn't matter if they _theoretically_ last a long time, if people are still going to throw them away to freshen up their cupboard of glasses to keep up with the latest fashions.
  - pixelfarmer 2y ago
    East Germany ceased to exist in 1990. One of the glasses also shows the Mitropa label: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitropa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitropa but it was used on a broader scale. I wouldn't assume that all these "assets" of bars, pubs, Mitropa etc. were for example sold off, i.e. you can expect quite a big number being dumped/destroyed, aside of the numbers that went into wear and tear until 1990 in the first place. There is a lot of stuff that was ubiquitous during the time of East Germany and went poof pretty fast after the wall came down, usually into the dumpster in one way or another.
  - ljsprague 2y ago
    6 pieces going for $283 on eBay right now with 2 days of bidding left.
- dabber21 2y ago
  household maybe, but bars and cafes? also usually with time companies figure out ways to reduce costs of production/process
numpad0 2y ago
This is basically Cold War predecessor to Gorilla Glass. It's not a lost art at all, but just one of first generation products.
- chasil 2y ago
  I wonder why Corning doesn't make these as a boutique or novelty product. Edit: Could this also be used for window glass?
  - kragen 2y ago
    before they sold off the brand to a different company, corning started selling tempered glass as 'pyrex', resulting in a dozen or so hospital visits with disabling burn injuries every year in the usa alone i'm not sure whether to blame this kind of line extension fraud on unethical management, on consumers who can't tell the difference and consequently buy such fraudulent products whenever they're cheaper, or on poorly-thought-out regulations (making real pyrex emits boria into the air, which is an insecticide and therefore does environmental damage, a consideration probably not relevant to gorilla glass)
    - rangerelf 2y ago
      > i'm not sure whether to blame this kind of line extension fraud on unethical management, on consumers who can't tell the difference and consequently buy such fraudulent products whenever they're cheaper, or on poorly-thought-out regulations Porqué no los tres? CEOs pursuing yet another vacation home, under-educated consumers that lose their minds over 'saving' 1c ("$5.00" too expensive "4.99!" OHH THIS ONE!!), and regulators either with a private-sector agenda or who have no teeth because Congress is politically compromised. There's more than enough blame to spread around.
  - psunavy03 2y ago
    Corning already makes Corelle, which are tempered glass plates and bowls. They'll also take a bounce off a tile floor from counter-level and have a good shot at not breaking.
4gotunameagain 2y ago
Of course, such a durable product can never succeed under hypercapitalist environments. Phrases like planned obsolescence and market cannibalisation come to mind. Remember back when even a mid range HiFi amplifier came with quality service manuals, and lasted for a lifetime ? Sure, it was more expensive relatively. But you only had to buy it once. With the current climate uncertainty, we need to find a way to incentivise quality, reliability and repairability. There is so much ephemeral junk being produced.
- Funes- 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
    The thing is, it isn't a sensible comment, it's hyperbolic nonsense. Even the notion that "hifi sets aren't like they used to be" is so transparently false
  - throwaway48540 2y ago
    [flagged]
- throwaway48540 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - 6510 2y ago
    yes, how often did necessities go missing? All I know is a story about many people not getting shoes because the paperwork was misplaced and a story about producing nails of the most productively looking kind that no one needed.
    - throwaway48540 2y ago
      [flagged]
wiether 2y ago
The company's history is interesting because in France almost the same thing happened with Duralex, which was near bankruptcy but was bought back by the employees a few weeks back. And now it's popular again. Until people forget about it and buy cheap stuff again. https://www.glass-international.com/news/duralex-employees-to-takeover-emblematic-glass-manufacturer https://www.glass-international.com/news/duralex-employees-t...
- morsch 2y ago
  I wonder how Duralex compares to Superfest in terms of durability. Duralex is certainly more durable than regular glass, but I have stopped demoing it because it does break sometimes. Our Duralex glasses are also pretty thick, while the Superfest stuff is rather thin.
  - mdasen 2y ago
    They're kinda similar in that they're both tempered glasses - where you create residual compressive stress in the outer part of the glass which makes it stronger. However, there are different ways to temper glass. Superfest (and Gorilla Glass in smartphones) uses an ion-exchange technique where sodium ions on the surface are replaced with larger potassium ions. I'm guessing that Duralex uses a thermal tempering process where the glass is heated very high and then rapidly cooled to temper it, but I don't know. Maybe Duralex also uses an ion-exchange and it just isn't as good as the Superfest process. Even with smartphone screens, newer techniques from Corning have created much stronger screens than we had 10-15 years ago even though they're all using the same basic ion-exchange technique. Personally, I love tempered glass even if it might break. They're a lot less likely to break, they're less dangerous if they do break, and they don't really cost that much more. Maybe you'll pay $3/glass for regular soda-lime glasses and $5-6/glass for nice tempered ones, but I bought my tempered glasses a decade ago and still have all of them, despite having moved 3 times (and my packing technique doesn't involve bubble wrap or anything). Maybe Superfest is better, but for my non-restaurant use, tempered glasses like those from Duralex or Bormioli Rocco seem to be good enough.
    - deleted 2y ago
mannykannot 2y ago
This article's brief explanation of how the process works seems somewhat misleading, as it claims that the ion substitution creates tension in the glass, which makes it harder for cracks to spread - but cracks propagate under tension. As I understand it, the substitution of larger potassium ions for smaller sodium ions in the surface layer creates a compressive stress in the surface, and while this results in a counterbalancing tension in the interior, it is the surface compression which inhibits crack propagation. This is how tempered glass works, except the surface compression and interior tension is the result in the greater shrinkage of the slowly-cooling interior. The interior tension is also the reason why these glasses shatter into tiny pieces when they do break (see also Prince Rupert's drops: there are many videos on Youtube.) I am wondering if the chemical process is slow, which might be another reason for it not being adopted for ordinary objects such as drinking glasses.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  It's the same process used on modern phone screens (Gorilla Glass). Chemical strengthening. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemically_strengthened_glass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemically_strengthened_glas... And yes, it works the same way as thermally toughened glass (inducing a compressive stress near the surface).
  - mannykannot 2y ago
    I see this article says that chemically strengthened glass can be cut, and while it becomes weakened in the vicinity of the cut, it does not shatter as a result. The Wikipedia article does not explain in any detail why this is so, but it suggests that there is less tensile stress than in tempered glass. Perhaps this is because the latter needs the internal tension to create the surface compression, while in chemically toughened glass, the compression is generated within the surface layer? I have seen it said about Supafest drinking glasses that they do shatter into tiny pieces when they do break, though I do not know whether the source was reliable. If this is the case, then it suggests there is some difference between the Supafest and Corning / Gorilla Glass processes.
lukan 2y ago
"In the case of the Superfest glass, the anonymity of the makers was also politically desired. The GDR’s regime preached solidarity and unity. The prevailing ideology regarded the collective more highly than the talents and abilities of the individual. Even though Superfest glasses were ubiquitous in every bar, canteen and household in the Soviet satellite state, few people had heard of Paul Bittner, Fritz Keuchel and Tilo Poitz, the design collective who gave them their shape." Interesting how the article laments, that they did not name the designers, but then happily ignore the names of the actual inventors of the material: "The groundbreaking technology they deployed was developed in the 1970s at the Department for Glass Structure Research at the Central Institute for Inorganic Chemistry near Dresden. The material scientists there knew that when glass breaks, it is typically due to microscopic cracks in the material’s surface which form during the production process. Dramatically increasing the toughness of the glass surface was possible, they found, by replacing the smaller sodium ions in the glass with electronically charged potassium ions. Potassium ions need more space, pressing harder against neighbouring atoms and building up more tension that needs to be overcome for the microscopic cracks to get bigger" I believe the technology in itself, is a bit more admirable and rather the people involved mentioning, than those who were using it to shape a glass.
- guappa 2y ago
  I've listened to a (bad) podcast about women scientist and the host went on a rant about how the evil men took away from the real inventor of the fridge, that was a woman, to give it to a man. I challenge anyone to name the inventor of the fridge. At least in my country it is completely unknown who it was.
  - LeroyRaz 2y ago
    I mean, Wikipedia says "the history of artificial refrigeration began when Scottish professor William Cullen [made a fridge]" But, again (merely sourcing from Wikipedia) the idea of evaporative cooling is ancient.
    - rvnx 2y ago
prmoustache 2y ago
Interesting. I resorted a year ago to using stainless steel glasses (for water, not wine or beer).
laborcontract 2y ago
Article fails to mention that these glasses explode when they do crack. Not fun cleaning it up.
- consp 2y ago
  I've had many Duralex glasses break (it has the same "issue") and exploding is a massive exaggeration. They break into many peaces yes, but they are less dangerous than normal glass. I also do not like cleaning up normal glass since you need to handle it with care. Especially around drunk people.
RRRA 2y ago
I'm curious who is still making something similar
jakubmazanec 2y ago
Not sure if it's the same material, but this article reminded me of a very funny scene from the Czech movie "Pelíšky" about "unbreakable" glasses. Here it is with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/6QTieSQeNvE?si=vmtCUAKXVhtg62aq&t=1930 https://youtu.be/6QTieSQeNvE?si=vmtCUAKXVhtg62aq&t=1930
- timeon 2y ago
  My first though after seeing the title: A skláři nebudou mít co žrát. But unlike plastic ones in the film, glasses in the article are from modified glass.
  - trizoza 2y ago
    Same here, even shared with my family with note: "Pelisky on top of hackernews today" :D
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      Heh, a Czech club forming in real time :) In order to fulfill all the memes, we can defenestrate those glasses.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - lb1lf 2y ago
        Not Czech, I just wanted to chime in that 'defenestration' is one of my all-time favourite words - that the act occurred frequently enough to warrant its own word being coined...
        082349872349872 2y ago
        Frequently enough to have been mentioned in the bible...
        2y ago
echoangle 2y ago
I wonder how often people really break glasses, for me it’s maybe once per year or less. Unless the glasses last a lifetime and you never replace them due to style/design preferences, I don’t think it would be economical to go with those glasses. Ecologically it’s different of course.
- black6 2y ago
  For each individual drinking glass it depends on how frequently it's handled. In a household a drinking glass may get handled once a week. In a restaurant or pub it can be multiple times a day. More frequent handling means more opportunity to break.
- hencoappel 2y ago
  Now think on the scale of a restaurant/bar. Could save them a lot if none of the glasses broke!
isoprophlex 2y ago
> Dramatically increasing the toughness of the glass surface was possible, they found, by replacing the smaller sodium ions in the glass with electronically charged potassium ions. This sentence angers the chemist in me. A potassium cation has exactly the same charge as a sodium cation, namely, +1.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Well that bothers the logician in me, they didn't say the sodium ions weren't charged, you are just assuming that implication ;)
  - Log_out_ 2y ago
    If they knew enough about it to write about it correctly they would pursuit other work then journalism.
    - 1attice 2y ago
      > If they knew enough about it to write about it correctly they would pursuit other work then journalism. *pursue. *than. Honestly, given the sentiment expressed, just too funny.
      - pxc 2y ago
        Specialization is wonderful and makes great things possible, but it also tends to inflict a certain kind of brain damage. Specialists! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - kevincox 2y ago
    Well that bothers the linguist in me, typically only relevant information is included when contrasting two items. So while in general you can't assume the negation of the implication, in conversation it is generally expected that if I say "I switched from X to Y because it is my favourite colour" you should be able to assume that X is not my favourite colour.
panick21_ 2y ago
> The glasses are too good for pure market thinking. This argument never made sense to me. Of course if you go to the big glass retailers. That just sounds like dumb marketing. It clearly would require a smaller retailer that could disrupt. The people you have to convince to buy these are the direct consumers who carry the cost. Combine that maybe with some financial products to make it easy to acquire or directly cooperate with drinks companies, or distribution companies. Or I mean there are lots of other potential markets for glass. At the very least they are not telling the full story here. If this glass is really so amazingly superior, and such a no-brainer, then somebody could have saved a lot of money here. More likely the company was just not positioned or lead well enough to figure out a strategy. At the vary least I need more then a one supporter with skin in the game saying 'we were just to good'. I have heard that often and its sometimes true, more often it isn't.
- iSnow 2y ago
  The first years of post-reunification were not good years for innovative companies from the former GDR. There was lack of money for investments unless you got sold to Western investors who might or might not have understood the value of your product. Eastern companies notoriously had old machines and low productivity and no experience in sales & marketing. Wages had to be paid in hard currency all of a sudden while traditional markets in the East did not have this hard currency. Western markets usually were already very competitive (as mentioned in the article where they tried to sell to Western Germany a couple of years before). Additionally, there was no internet back then, so crowdfunding wasn't available, direct selling to consumers was very hard, and sophisticated market places did not exist. I know those glasses, they were indeed very good, but kind of out of fashion in the early 90's.
- 6510 2y ago
  I'm a big fan of Duralex, I've inherited a lot of their glasses. They look nice, feel good, I've always used them. They remind me of my mum, my aunt and my grandma. I've also never purchased any. There is no reason to think they won't last another 100 years? Is there?
aeyes 2y ago
To me the most surprising property to this day is how thin and light these glasses were. They are almost as thin as a modern wine glass but I don't remember ever breaking one accidentally. Edit: The article is poorly researched. The design pictured wasn't the only design they sold, it was just the most common one used in restaurants and bars. I had these glasses with kids prints. I found a page which shows a few more designs: https://militariasammlermarkt.de/ddr/zum-thema-ddr-ostalgie/3480/superfest-bierglas-0-25-liter-mit-logo-veb-sachsenglas-schwepnitz-ddr-lausitzer-glas https://militariasammlermarkt.de/ddr/zum-thema-ddr-ostalgie/...
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  They specifically mentioned they had a range of glasses, so don't know why you say it's poorly researched: > For their range of glasses – which included variants for champagne, schnapps and cognac as well as three different sizes for beer – the designer trio were inspired by the equally beautiful so-called Wirteglas, which the East German designers Margarete Jahny and Erich Müller created in the early 1970s.
  - Retric 2y ago
    He’s referring to the patterns on the glass not the shape of the glass. > One factor that may have hindered Superfest’s competitiveness in a unified Germany was its functionalist, austere look. Especially in southern parts of the country, drinkers like to swig their beer from glasses decorated with gold edging or engraved coats of arms. “Baroque decoration on a Superfest glass wouldn’t work,” says Höhne. “It would violate the design itself.” The 6th image in the carousel on that page shows gold rimmed glasses with a decorative design, hardly an austere look.
    - cududa 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
bravura 2y ago
Then can someone explain why the obscene and completely ludicrous "pfand" token system is so common still in Eastern Germany?
- c-fe 2y ago
  Its common everywhere in germany and also other countries, and why is it obscene and ludicrous?
  - thecosmicfrog 2y ago
    It has just been introduced in Ireland under the name "Re-turn".
  - jonp888 2y ago
    Since he mentions a "token", I don't think he means the recycling system, but rather than whenver you visit a festival/sports events etc., you typically have to pay a deposit of €2 for the cup your drink is served in. Before you leave you have to return the cup for a refund. Sometimes you also get issued a "token" and the refund is only possible with the token, so you can't return other cups you find lying around.
    - bravura 2y ago
      It's the concept of a pfand system that involves a token. The token is ridiculous and makes no sense. I've actively interrogated GPT4 on it and it becomes increasingly nonsensical trying to explain it. Possession of the cup itself is proof in itself that I possess the item of value worth the pfand. The token itself is pointless.
- Mordisquitos 2y ago
  There is nothing wrong with the "pfand" system and I wish we had it here in Spain. However, the recycling industry actively lobbies against it [0]. [0] (in Spanish) https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ecoembes/miente-investigacion-evidencia-fiasco-gestion-residuos-envases-espana https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ecoembes/miente-investigacion-...
distantsounds 2y ago
ah, you can get bongs made in the USA with similar strength. https://tankglass.com/ https://tankglass.com/
tristor 2y ago
What annoys me about this is that due to recyclability they are going to replace the borosilicate glass formula with one made off soda-lime glass. Soda-lime glass is significantly less durable in heat/cool cycles, and part of the point of high-durability glass is it's reusability! Germany, like many parts of the world, in the name of being green has gone all-in on recycling but fail to remember the green trifecta and it's priority ordering: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. That is, recycling is a /last resort/. If they continued with the prior borosilicate based formula these could be high-temperature sanitized and reused when making bottles and it works better for the hot/cold cycles typical of high temperature sanitization and cool wash-downs used in commercial bar settings. The same thing happened to the Pyrex brand. It used to be the gold standard for glass bakeware because it was made from borosilicate glass which made it much more drop resistant /and/ better for heat/cool cycles. Now Pyrex branded products have gone to being made predominantly of soda-lime based formulas and newer Pyrex dishes are known for being prone to exploding when you move a casserole prepped the night before from the fridge/freezer to the oven. I really wish we still had seriously durable high-quality products available and we weren't regressing to lowest common denominator across our society. Soda-lime glass is not a buy-it-for-life product, regardless of what you do to the formula.
fencepost 2y ago
For people talking about glass recycling, it's not NEARLY as simple as you might think because of input issues. Along with CoE (Coefficient of Expansion) concerns that may arise depending on the exact input materials, recycling ends up with grit and contaminants in the material, and those end up as inclusions in final products. That might not be a concern for glass blocks, but for anything where you care about the end quality (food containers, large sheets of glass for windows, etc.) inclusions can result in a lot of production loss. It's also not like you can just melt it and let the inclusions float or sink out - molten glass doesn't flow like water, and particles don't just move through it.
- morsch 2y ago
  Complicated, but routinely done? Glass recycling seems to be routine and widespread. Glass containers and jars, that is, not drinking glasses.
  - fencepost 2y ago
    It's absolutely routinely done and there's a lot of PCR glass used, but there's also a significant amount of cleaning needed. I'm not involved in the industry beyond past interest in glasswork, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were packaging changes happening all along that improve the simplify cleaning - eg chemically soluble ink printing on containers instead of glued paper or composite labels.
- tgtweak 2y ago
  This is why they have green and brown bottles in beverage industries, they're typically lower down the recycling chain so impurities and mixed silicates can be used without affecting the end use. I don't think this glass is any less prone to recycling than standard sodium glass since it looks to be a post process with largely the same input materials.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    Green, but especially brown, also protects photosensitive contents (eg beer).
jiehong 2y ago
You know Kintsugi, this Chinese and Japanese ceramic repair art by making the repair shine? Maybe we could try to do that with standard glass glasses.
deleted 2y ago
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ngcc_hk 2y ago
Usual problem - a glass that last meant a company that broke. Same for lamp. Not sure whether communism under a foreign power helps here.
complaintdept 2y ago
Corning used to make these bowls (called "Grab and Go", I think) that were very difficult to break. You could cook in them, eat out of them with utensils that damage normal ceramic (like a Ti spork), and probably throw them out of your kitchen window onto cement and they'd be fine. They sold off the patent to some other company that couldn't afford the production and quality went way down -- I think prod required intense heat and/or pressure. Sad times.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Sounds like the Pyrex story - apparently "old Pyrex" is well regarded and desired, "new Pyrex" is crap. https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-between-two-pyrex-types/ https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-be...
- tdeck 2y ago
  The new company is called Corelle and they make a pretty durable range dishes and bowls out of the same material. I don't think I've ever broken one by dropping it, however if you drop a ceramic knife blade onto one of them the Corelle will immediately fracture for some reason.
  - rpdillon 2y ago
    Corelle is legit, anecdotally. Have had a set of Corelle since 2004, have yet to break a single item. Mostly, dishwasher cycles are slowly eating away at the edges of the plates and bowls, but given its been 20 years, I'm OK with that. I'm not like the guy mentioned in another comment that throws his dishes onto the counter and into the cabinet, though.
BenFranklin100 2y ago
Rule #1: Never read a Guardian article about East Germany.
yokoprime 2y ago
Is this like a prince rupert's drop? i assume this completely explodes when it breaks.
jdfedgon 2y ago
There's this anecdote, somehow connected to this topic. Some decades ago, a manufacturer from East Germany, former GDR, was participating at a fair for lights and light bulbs. This manufacturer invented a light bulb that never burns its glow wire. At some point during the fair the companies from West Germany had a big laugh on that manufacturer, mocking him and his invention. Their argument: If you build a bulb like this, how are you going to make money? Now, I cannot say why we don't have glasses like this already but my assumption is that the monetary incentive is seen as being contradictory to such an invention.
- occamschainsaw 2y ago
  This actually happened much earlier in the first half of the 20th century. It was an international cartel with household names (GE, Osram, Phillips etc). "The cartel tested their bulbs and fined manufacturers for bulbs that lasted more than 1,000 hours." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy
- lesuorac 2y ago
  I mean if you don't already have a large light bulb business this sounds like a great idea. Make a million light bulbs and sell all of them and then do whatever it is that you want. Similar to finding a cure for cancer. There's a huge market that you can just eliminate and then retire.
- cleansy 2y ago
  That and producing these glasses with said technique is a lot more expensive. You need to heat up the glass and the potassium nitrate to 500C, mostly over hours because otherwise the glass breaks. Then you need to keep it for a couple of hours, then cool down slowly. What made the initial east german production work is, they did it on a large industrial scale, but even then the energy that you need makes the glasses quite expensive to produce. It's hard to justify buying 6-7€ for a regular drinking cup when a comparable form factor is 1€ or something in this region.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
ianbicking 2y ago
"The problem with the original Superfest glass is that its manufacturers worked with modified alumino or borosilicate glass, which is not as easy to recycle as the more common soda-lime glass. So Soulbottles’ challenge is to produce glass that is both durable and recyclable." Why would they care about recycling it? It's not a disposable product. If it breaks you can't recycle it anyway (at least in the US recyclers don't want broken glass). Isn't durable good enough? Or is this a result of Germany's obsessive recycling culture?
- sofixa 2y ago
  > If it breaks you can't recycle it anyway (at least in the US recyclers don't want broken glass) In France glass is explicitly broken upon deposit at the recycle bin. I'd guess it's the same in Germany. > Or is this a result of Germany's obsessive recycling culture God forbid anyone thinks a little bit ahead to avoid extra waste.
  - ianbicking 2y ago
    You can't recycle ceramics but I don't think it's wasteful to use ceramics. You should just use them as a durable good that is kept and used as long as possible.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      Ceramics are literally millennia old as a concept. It'd be a bit shortsighted to introduce new materials today and not think about its full lifecycle.
      - ianbicking 2y ago
        Highly durable goods generally require a lot of energy input, because to break the thing you have to exert more energy than was used to construct the item. Or you can think of it that you use a high-energy state when you want it to be malleable, so it is far from that state during normal use. In ceramics, for instance, when you fire to a higher temperature you can create a more durable piece. (Of course you can make a flawed item that lacks this durability.) The very thing that makes an item durable also makes it hard to recycle, something that is hard to break is also hard to decompose and recompose into a new item. Also you should only invest all that energy into creating something if you plan to use it for a long time. A highly durable glass cup is great... but only if you use it for a long time. If you recycle it you've failed. The literal mass of the finished glass is trivial compared to the energy invested in creating it.
n0b1m 2y ago
[flagged]
doener 2y ago
This reminds me of a column in DIE ZEIT from 1999 on the subject of the planned obsolescence of light bulbs: "Is it actually true that light bulb manufacturers could have produced light bulbs with an almost unlimited life a long time ago, but don't want to in order to stay in business? Rainer Mauersberger, Tucson (USA) I don't want to speculate here about the motives of the light bulb manufacturers, but just want to list a few facts. 1. every light bulb (as it is correctly called) has a limited service life because tungsten atoms constantly evaporate from the filament and the wire breaks at some point. 2. how long the wire lasts can be "adjusted", for example by making it thicker or thinner. However, if you make it glow less brightly and thus increase its service life, the already poor efficiency drops even further - a standard light bulb only converts four percent of the electrical energy into light. 3) Since December 24, 1924, there has in fact been an international "light bulb cartel", which was essentially controlled by the companies General Electric (USA), Osram/Siemens (Germany) and Associated Electrical Industries (Great Britain). This cartel not only divided up the global markets among themselves, but also reached agreements on how long a light bulb should last - since the Second World War, this has been 1,000 hours. In the Soviet Union and Hungary, there have always been bulbs with a longer service life; the Chinese bulb still burns for 5000 hours today. 4) The inventor Dieter Binninger developed a light bulb with a considerably longer life expectancy, which he also patented. His three improvements: a new form of filament filament, a glass bulb filled with noble gas and a diode as a "dimmer". The Binninger bulb lasted 150,000 hours and consumed only around 50 percent more energy than an ordinary bulb for the same light output. Binninger produced the light bulbs himself, but then negotiated with the Treuhand to take over the GDR company Narva. Shortly after submitting his offer, the light bulb revolutionary crashed in a private plane in 1991. 5 Today, light bulbs are no longer manufactured in the new federal states. Light bulbs in the western world still have a life span of 1000 hours. Christoph Drösser Translated with DeepL.com (free version)" https://www.zeit.de/stimmts/1999/199933_stimmts_gluehbir https://www.zeit.de/stimmts/1999/199933_stimmts_gluehbir
- BobAliceInATree 2y ago
  Technology Connections did a whole video on the pros & cons of longer-lasting incandescents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
r3trohack3r 2y ago
> But the main reason for its decline, paradoxically, was its strength. Glass retailers who play by the rules of the market live off the fact that their products break, so they can sell more. A glass that didn’t break was a threat to profits. I've heard this story repeated multiple times but I've never bought it. Unless there is a glass cartel, i.e. crony capitalism, I have a hard time believing that consumers wouldn't storm the gates for unbreakable glassware. If I were a bar owner, and I had near 100% restocking of my glassware annually (which I believe is in the ballpark of the actual number), I would be willing to bypass my supply chain and order these glasses directly from the manufacturer. I can't see how someone couldn't make a decent living off the addressable market of one time sales of this glassware. This doesn't seem like it is a true market dynamic - but I might be missing something.
- rajnathani 2y ago
  The thought process which I have here is that decades ago when the supply chains were more dis-intermediated than they are today (due to higher information asymmetry due to lower speed communication than we have today), that it could've naturally resulted in distributors to gravitate towards less durable glass without necessarily forming any cartels as such. It is technically still possible in today's age too, but very likely to a much lesser extent.
jokethrowaway 2y ago
The best alternative is Aluminium oxynitride, a bulletproof transparent ceramic. It's kind of expensive, though. Would you buy a lifetime glass for 500$?
Brechreiz 2y ago
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schappim 2y ago
Previous discussion [1]: Superfest – The almost unbreakable East German Glass (2021) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399
idkwhatiamdoing 2y ago
This kickstarter worked together with some researchers to bring back to live exactly that kind of glass! Today I actually received the link to place my order from the pledge https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulkupfer/ultraglass-stronger-and-lighter-bottles-with-ion-technology https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulkupfer/ultraglass-s...
samstave 2y ago
I love this. While we are talking Neat! glass: Ball Aerospace is where you want to focus for a sec as well. Ball aerospace basically is the secret tech gian few know about - specifically in their high-end lenses for all the nifty spy thingies... But the Ball Brothers did a bunch of other nifty things - my favorite being the Mason Jar. -- What I like about this story, is how it reignites the vision I have for a stackable Mason Jar thats unbreakable such as the German glass. - but as a core packaging line. I have a large number of mason jars as my primary drinking vessels - but I want a service, like the milk-men of olde, and have a fully functional closed loop product, package delivery infra built on high tech mason jars, stackable, made from unbreakable-ish things, inclusive of glass foams (aerogels in the walls based on 3d printing a microfoam of glass then encasing it... and having a ceramic induction coil in the base of the glass so you can use an induction coaster (of varying size) to heat/ cook that which is in the mason jar... the jars interlock so you can stack extension tubes onto them. but all based on mason jar everything. aside from the hyper stackable. (Also I noteced that the drop science behind that beer glass is that it provides the lip for you to rest it in your hand, and its designed to not break from the angle that a drunk person most typically drops his drink - too drunk, and has a week grip - so it just slips straight down... mostly) https://www.ball.com/our-company/our-story/history-timeline https://www.ball.com/our-company/our-story/history-timeline https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-ball-aerospace-to-develop-noaas-geoxo-sounder-instrument/ https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-ball-aerospac...
14 2y ago
So weird when I mention something at home then few hours later see the exact thing here. The other day I broke a glass then yesterday my dad broke a glass then today my son broke a glass. We are not usually like this but just one of those fluke weeks where we all did it. I was telling my mom that there used to be a glass that was almost unbreakable and could take much more of a hit but that I didn't think they made them any more. I would love to get a set of these glasses and yes I would pay a bit more for them.
colonwqbang 2y ago
> But the main reason for its decline, paradoxically, was its strength. Glass retailers who play by the rules of the market live off the fact that their products break, so they can sell more. A glass that didn’t break was a threat to profits. It would be interesting to have some supporting evidence for this conspiracy theory. Perhaps the Guardian expects us to buy it because it plays into our preconceptions about evil capitalists vs. morally pure socialists.
- plewd 2y ago
  Not exactly the most reliable supporting evidence, but Veritasium has a video which talks about this stuff. https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE?feature=shared https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE?feature=shared
madsen954 2y ago
I remember one accident I had when I was a kid walking up the stairs, holding one of those glasses in my hand, stumbled and banged the glass loudly against the stone of the stairs. Everyone was looking at me but apart from the loud kloink noise nothing happened to the glass.
fuzzfactor 2y ago
When Benjamin Franklin was still alive there was no other place to get extra-strong heat-resistant glassware suitable for chemical experimentation other than obscure locations in what is now Germany, with their secret techniques developed over a period of centuries at the least. I would say it helps to start early. I really do get the idea that in pre-literate times some scientific progress was continued over many generations more impressively by lifetimes of hands-on incremental advances, rather than through documentation which could only be deciphered by the few, and utilized by even fewer.
darig 2y ago
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512 points by n1b0m 2y ago

There's an excellent youtube video that discusses this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvBpjCOBu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvBpjCOBu0

voidey 2y ago
Indeed, was going to share that but you already did.
mannykannot 2y ago
This video makes the point that the technology was also developed by Corning (allegedly independently, though I am skeptical that it independently came up with the concept, given that the video claims that the Superfest process was patented), which was likewise unsuccessful in finding a market for it until Apple came looking for a tough screen for its iPhone.

torginus 2y ago

Here's a video of a guy dropping said unbreakable glass 3 times and breaking it: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NIAbt_GxPsg https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NIAbt_GxPsg The problem with unbreakable glass is once it hits a really hard material, like a grain of quartz, or a ceramic fragment, it breaks just the same.

Tepix 2y ago
It doesn't have to be perfect, as long as it lasts much longer it's already a big win.
- ta1243 2y ago
  Is it? Based on what metric. If a glass costs €1 and lasts 1 year, and an unbreakable glass costs €10 and lasts 5 years, that's not a big win.
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    Not if going out and buying the glasses takes time, or if storing additional spare glasses takes precious space, or cleaning the broken glass takes workers' time, or if the broken glass could be a hazard, or there may be supply issues with getting the same uniform glasses years later, or any other number of reasons.
    - signatoremo 2y ago
      Oh the new version of the glasses will be cheaper, more durable, lighter, more energy efficient to make. The point remains, longer lasting glasses may or may not be superior.
      - pixelfarmer 2y ago
        It is all about metrics and how you bend them to whatever you prefer. However, the more this deviates from actual reality, the more likely reality will eventually show up and bust the show in the most horrible way possible.
      - dotancohen 2y ago
        You don't know that when making the initial purchase.
  - xnickb 2y ago
    The article talks about sustainability, so clearly Euro isn't the unit to measure that.
    - ta1243 2y ago
      Ideally the cost would include all externalities and thus allow people to judge the value and bare the full cost. But kWh, or grammes of glass, or carbon credits, or whatever you want. Normal glass is very recyclable and doesn't require a lot of energy or resource to recycle. "Long life" glass may well not be recycled at all.
- cess11 2y ago
  I have a few glasses with handles from the fifties (or as far back as the twenties, there's no stamp on them) that are quite brittle and will for sure break at the bottom if you pour hot water in them. Seems to me like they last long enough when taken care of, and in situations where you don't the "unbreakable" glass splinters into a rather nasty dust like material.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    I like the drinking glasses from hardened glass. When they break, they shatter into a lot of almost cubic pieces, not into little syringe like splinter like regular glass.
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  I suspect that waste produced by broken glasses is so minuscule compared to the overall glass production/waste that this is largely irrelevant. Edit: Apparently glass cookware and drinking glasses are often not recyclable. This seems like a more important aspect to improve than durability even if, again, still overall a small improvement compared to overall glass industry.
  - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
    Broken glasses in bars, for example, have a lot more impacts than just waste. Broken glass has to be cleaned up, causes injuries, even causes lost product in some situations. I was in a cocktail bar once with three friends who ordered us the same chilled cocktail, served there day in, day out, and as the cocktails were poured into the glasses, three of the four glasses broke. Plink, plink, plink. Glasses too hot, cocktail too cold, some other handling problem. Who knows. But tougher glass might not have done that.
    - mytailorisrich 2y ago
      That sounds like clutching at straws while not really showing how that'd make a significant difference to anything. Make all glasses recyclable. Probably more important but less marketable for a new startup idea...
      - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
        I don't think it is "clutching at straws" for a bar to want glasses that break less frequently, causing fewer safety concerns, and to be prepared to pay the extra, but whatever.
      - inglor_cz 2y ago
        A friend used to work in a student bar as a bartender. Broken glass was legitimately a safety issue. Drunken people can cut themselves quite creatively, including severed sinews. Ironically, most of his patrons were medical students.
forinti 2y ago
Short tangential story: My grandfather many decades ago came home with a pack of "unbreakable" glasses. My grandmother asked why he had bought them. He shrugged and replied "well, if you don't want them..." and threw them all on the floor. They all broke, of course. My grandmother was not amused. She was a very serious person. The rest of the family is still laughing on 60 years later.
- sumtechguy 2y ago
  My aunt did that with a corningware plate. "This is unbreakable" then proceeded to yeet it on the concrete floor covered in linoleum. It was quiet an impressive splash of splinters everywhere. Shatter resistant is a better term. :) Or as Jerryrigeverything says 'glass is glass'.
  - theluketaylor 2y ago
    My mother did the exact same thing. When I was a kid we hosted a 3 refugee sisters who were new to Canada. Despite a significant language barrier my mother tried to explain the dinnerware was unbreakable and they didn't need to worry about it too much. She tossed a plate on the floor to demonstrate. It landed on edge and shattered everywhere. The poor refugees were so confused about why this white woman has just destroyed a perfectly good plate.

leeoniya 2y ago

discussed 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399

TheRealPomax 2y ago
That's a completely different article.
knowaveragejoe 2y ago
It was discussed here even more recently than that.

veltas 2y ago

In the UK, and I suspect elsewhere, pub glasses are manufactured to indicate their age as they're meant to be replaced regularly. Often in pubs you can see they've far outlived their proper life, if you know what to look for, and are covered in etches from repeated washes. Clearly glasses last a long time, I don't think smashing is the kind of issue they're making it out to be. These hardened glasses are sharper when they smash. They tend to smash after a few drops, but more drops than normal glasses. They solve a historical problem from East Germany: lack of resources to make glass, which is no longer a problem. Normal glasses are recyclable. EDIT: No apparently they are not, so maybe that's useful?

Xeyz0r 2y ago
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Rinzler89 2y ago
>pub glasses are manufactured to indicate their age Why? This just sounds like planned obsolescence. >as they're meant to be replaced regularly Why? Is it a real hygrine problem or something?
- scott_w 2y ago
  It's likely the washing process still scratches the glass but it's less visible. It doesn't increase the "safe" life of the glass, as bacteria is still able to get into those scratches. Making the scratches obvious makes clear to the pub landlord that they need to be replaced (and tips patrons off so they'll put pressure on the landlord by not coming back).
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >It's likely the washing process still scratches the glass but it's less visible. It doesn't increase the "safe" life of the glass, as bacteria is still able to get into those scratches. Honestly, I've never heard of this before and I have friends working in the restaurant industry. Is it a real documented health hazard or a FUD spread by the glass manufacturers to create perpetual demand for their product (Glass As A Service)? My grandma still uses the same glassware from like 30+ years ago and washes it by hand and it doesn't look tarnished at all. Is she and our family likely to die from drinking from those old glassware with micro scratches?

Waterluvian 2y ago

Maybe there’s a way to double layer the part you hold with a pocket of air for insulation. Anecdotally, many people hold glasses poorly for fear of warming their drink with their hand.

bux93 2y ago
Double walled glasses exist, they are used for tea or frothy coffee. The glass is very thin though; the trade-off being that if it was regular thickness it would be very heavy and big relative to the contents - and your hands. This makes them even more likely to break! However, the brand Bodum do nice onces made from Borosilicate Glass.

willguest 2y ago

> The glasses are too good for pure market thinking. A demonstration that the economy isn't economical at all, when it comes to resources.

vasco 2y ago
It's the opposite, it makes no sense to build something forever. You have no clue what people will want or need in the future. If you make a bunch of forever glasses and in 50 years nobody wants to use glass containers anymore (or at least the ones you made), you just wasted a bunch of resources and energy making them last longer than they needed. Specially due to changing "taste" people want to change the items they use frequently. You can imagine other reasons why we shouldn't make products last forever, it's a huge over-investment of limited resources that could be used in the future for better things. Specially in a planet with limited resources but continuously evolving technology, it is really not good to make forever stuff unless the technological innovation stops. Because you could use the same resources later to do better stuff at the same cost. What we should do is wherever possible make things repairable and prosecute anyone that intentionally makes something harder to repair (not really applicable to glass, where recycling is the only option).
- immibis 2y ago
  So let's make things that only last a day because you never know what tomorrow will bring.
  - eru 2y ago
    Are you familiar with the concept of trade-offs?
    - malermeister 2y ago
      Sure. Do you see glassware not being in use at any point in the next 100 years though?

JR1427 2y ago

I remain to be convinced. We rarely smash glasses in my household. Normal glass is (presumably) cheaper and less resource intensive than this special glass. Sometimes making things less durable actually is better. Over engineering and special manufacturing has costs.

JR1427 2y ago
Also, if 120m were made, but they are now fetching 30+ dollars, then there can't be that many around anymore, so are they really that long-lived? It doesn't matter if they _theoretically_ last a long time, if people are still going to throw them away to freshen up their cupboard of glasses to keep up with the latest fashions.
- pixelfarmer 2y ago
  East Germany ceased to exist in 1990. One of the glasses also shows the Mitropa label: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitropa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitropa but it was used on a broader scale. I wouldn't assume that all these "assets" of bars, pubs, Mitropa etc. were for example sold off, i.e. you can expect quite a big number being dumped/destroyed, aside of the numbers that went into wear and tear until 1990 in the first place. There is a lot of stuff that was ubiquitous during the time of East Germany and went poof pretty fast after the wall came down, usually into the dumpster in one way or another.
- ljsprague 2y ago
  6 pieces going for $283 on eBay right now with 2 days of bidding left.
dabber21 2y ago
household maybe, but bars and cafes? also usually with time companies figure out ways to reduce costs of production/process

numpad0 2y ago

This is basically Cold War predecessor to Gorilla Glass. It's not a lost art at all, but just one of first generation products.

chasil 2y ago
I wonder why Corning doesn't make these as a boutique or novelty product. Edit: Could this also be used for window glass?
- kragen 2y ago
  before they sold off the brand to a different company, corning started selling tempered glass as 'pyrex', resulting in a dozen or so hospital visits with disabling burn injuries every year in the usa alone i'm not sure whether to blame this kind of line extension fraud on unethical management, on consumers who can't tell the difference and consequently buy such fraudulent products whenever they're cheaper, or on poorly-thought-out regulations (making real pyrex emits boria into the air, which is an insecticide and therefore does environmental damage, a consideration probably not relevant to gorilla glass)
  - rangerelf 2y ago
    > i'm not sure whether to blame this kind of line extension fraud on unethical management, on consumers who can't tell the difference and consequently buy such fraudulent products whenever they're cheaper, or on poorly-thought-out regulations Porqué no los tres? CEOs pursuing yet another vacation home, under-educated consumers that lose their minds over 'saving' 1c ("$5.00" too expensive "4.99!" OHH THIS ONE!!), and regulators either with a private-sector agenda or who have no teeth because Congress is politically compromised. There's more than enough blame to spread around.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  Corning already makes Corelle, which are tempered glass plates and bowls. They'll also take a bounce off a tile floor from counter-level and have a good shot at not breaking.

4gotunameagain 2y ago

Of course, such a durable product can never succeed under hypercapitalist environments. Phrases like planned obsolescence and market cannibalisation come to mind. Remember back when even a mid range HiFi amplifier came with quality service manuals, and lasted for a lifetime ? Sure, it was more expensive relatively. But you only had to buy it once. With the current climate uncertainty, we need to find a way to incentivise quality, reliability and repairability. There is so much ephemeral junk being produced.

Funes- 2y ago
[flagged]
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  The thing is, it isn't a sensible comment, it's hyperbolic nonsense. Even the notion that "hifi sets aren't like they used to be" is so transparently false
- throwaway48540 2y ago
  [flagged]
throwaway48540 2y ago
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- 6510 2y ago
  yes, how often did necessities go missing? All I know is a story about many people not getting shoes because the paperwork was misplaced and a story about producing nails of the most productively looking kind that no one needed.
  - throwaway48540 2y ago
    [flagged]

wiether 2y ago

The company's history is interesting because in France almost the same thing happened with Duralex, which was near bankruptcy but was bought back by the employees a few weeks back. And now it's popular again. Until people forget about it and buy cheap stuff again. https://www.glass-international.com/news/duralex-employees-to-takeover-emblematic-glass-manufacturer https://www.glass-international.com/news/duralex-employees-t...

morsch 2y ago
I wonder how Duralex compares to Superfest in terms of durability. Duralex is certainly more durable than regular glass, but I have stopped demoing it because it does break sometimes. Our Duralex glasses are also pretty thick, while the Superfest stuff is rather thin.
- mdasen 2y ago
  They're kinda similar in that they're both tempered glasses - where you create residual compressive stress in the outer part of the glass which makes it stronger. However, there are different ways to temper glass. Superfest (and Gorilla Glass in smartphones) uses an ion-exchange technique where sodium ions on the surface are replaced with larger potassium ions. I'm guessing that Duralex uses a thermal tempering process where the glass is heated very high and then rapidly cooled to temper it, but I don't know. Maybe Duralex also uses an ion-exchange and it just isn't as good as the Superfest process. Even with smartphone screens, newer techniques from Corning have created much stronger screens than we had 10-15 years ago even though they're all using the same basic ion-exchange technique. Personally, I love tempered glass even if it might break. They're a lot less likely to break, they're less dangerous if they do break, and they don't really cost that much more. Maybe you'll pay $3/glass for regular soda-lime glasses and $5-6/glass for nice tempered ones, but I bought my tempered glasses a decade ago and still have all of them, despite having moved 3 times (and my packing technique doesn't involve bubble wrap or anything). Maybe Superfest is better, but for my non-restaurant use, tempered glasses like those from Duralex or Bormioli Rocco seem to be good enough.
  - deleted 2y ago

mannykannot 2y ago

This article's brief explanation of how the process works seems somewhat misleading, as it claims that the ion substitution creates tension in the glass, which makes it harder for cracks to spread - but cracks propagate under tension. As I understand it, the substitution of larger potassium ions for smaller sodium ions in the surface layer creates a compressive stress in the surface, and while this results in a counterbalancing tension in the interior, it is the surface compression which inhibits crack propagation. This is how tempered glass works, except the surface compression and interior tension is the result in the greater shrinkage of the slowly-cooling interior. The interior tension is also the reason why these glasses shatter into tiny pieces when they do break (see also Prince Rupert's drops: there are many videos on Youtube.) I am wondering if the chemical process is slow, which might be another reason for it not being adopted for ordinary objects such as drinking glasses.

HPsquared 2y ago
It's the same process used on modern phone screens (Gorilla Glass). Chemical strengthening. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemically_strengthened_glass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemically_strengthened_glas... And yes, it works the same way as thermally toughened glass (inducing a compressive stress near the surface).
- mannykannot 2y ago
  I see this article says that chemically strengthened glass can be cut, and while it becomes weakened in the vicinity of the cut, it does not shatter as a result. The Wikipedia article does not explain in any detail why this is so, but it suggests that there is less tensile stress than in tempered glass. Perhaps this is because the latter needs the internal tension to create the surface compression, while in chemically toughened glass, the compression is generated within the surface layer? I have seen it said about Supafest drinking glasses that they do shatter into tiny pieces when they do break, though I do not know whether the source was reliable. If this is the case, then it suggests there is some difference between the Supafest and Corning / Gorilla Glass processes.

lukan 2y ago

"In the case of the Superfest glass, the anonymity of the makers was also politically desired. The GDR’s regime preached solidarity and unity. The prevailing ideology regarded the collective more highly than the talents and abilities of the individual. Even though Superfest glasses were ubiquitous in every bar, canteen and household in the Soviet satellite state, few people had heard of Paul Bittner, Fritz Keuchel and Tilo Poitz, the design collective who gave them their shape." Interesting how the article laments, that they did not name the designers, but then happily ignore the names of the actual inventors of the material: "The groundbreaking technology they deployed was developed in the 1970s at the Department for Glass Structure Research at the Central Institute for Inorganic Chemistry near Dresden. The material scientists there knew that when glass breaks, it is typically due to microscopic cracks in the material’s surface which form during the production process. Dramatically increasing the toughness of the glass surface was possible, they found, by replacing the smaller sodium ions in the glass with electronically charged potassium ions. Potassium ions need more space, pressing harder against neighbouring atoms and building up more tension that needs to be overcome for the microscopic cracks to get bigger" I believe the technology in itself, is a bit more admirable and rather the people involved mentioning, than those who were using it to shape a glass.

guappa 2y ago
I've listened to a (bad) podcast about women scientist and the host went on a rant about how the evil men took away from the real inventor of the fridge, that was a woman, to give it to a man. I challenge anyone to name the inventor of the fridge. At least in my country it is completely unknown who it was.
- LeroyRaz 2y ago
  I mean, Wikipedia says "the history of artificial refrigeration began when Scottish professor William Cullen [made a fridge]" But, again (merely sourcing from Wikipedia) the idea of evaporative cooling is ancient.
  - rvnx 2y ago

prmoustache 2y ago

Interesting. I resorted a year ago to using stainless steel glasses (for water, not wine or beer).

laborcontract 2y ago

Article fails to mention that these glasses explode when they do crack. Not fun cleaning it up.

consp 2y ago
I've had many Duralex glasses break (it has the same "issue") and exploding is a massive exaggeration. They break into many peaces yes, but they are less dangerous than normal glass. I also do not like cleaning up normal glass since you need to handle it with care. Especially around drunk people.

RRRA 2y ago

I'm curious who is still making something similar

jakubmazanec 2y ago

Not sure if it's the same material, but this article reminded me of a very funny scene from the Czech movie "Pelíšky" about "unbreakable" glasses. Here it is with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/6QTieSQeNvE?si=vmtCUAKXVhtg62aq&t=1930 https://youtu.be/6QTieSQeNvE?si=vmtCUAKXVhtg62aq&t=1930

timeon 2y ago
My first though after seeing the title: A skláři nebudou mít co žrát. But unlike plastic ones in the film, glasses in the article are from modified glass.
- trizoza 2y ago
  Same here, even shared with my family with note: "Pelisky on top of hackernews today" :D
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    Heh, a Czech club forming in real time :) In order to fulfill all the memes, we can defenestrate those glasses.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - lb1lf 2y ago
      Not Czech, I just wanted to chime in that 'defenestration' is one of my all-time favourite words - that the act occurred frequently enough to warrant its own word being coined...
      - 082349872349872 2y ago
        Frequently enough to have been mentioned in the bible...
      - 2y ago

echoangle 2y ago

I wonder how often people really break glasses, for me it’s maybe once per year or less. Unless the glasses last a lifetime and you never replace them due to style/design preferences, I don’t think it would be economical to go with those glasses. Ecologically it’s different of course.

black6 2y ago
For each individual drinking glass it depends on how frequently it's handled. In a household a drinking glass may get handled once a week. In a restaurant or pub it can be multiple times a day. More frequent handling means more opportunity to break.
hencoappel 2y ago
Now think on the scale of a restaurant/bar. Could save them a lot if none of the glasses broke!

isoprophlex 2y ago

> Dramatically increasing the toughness of the glass surface was possible, they found, by replacing the smaller sodium ions in the glass with electronically charged potassium ions. This sentence angers the chemist in me. A potassium cation has exactly the same charge as a sodium cation, namely, +1.

deleted 2y ago
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bongodongobob 2y ago
Well that bothers the logician in me, they didn't say the sodium ions weren't charged, you are just assuming that implication ;)
- Log_out_ 2y ago
  If they knew enough about it to write about it correctly they would pursuit other work then journalism.
  - 1attice 2y ago
    > If they knew enough about it to write about it correctly they would pursuit other work then journalism. *pursue. *than. Honestly, given the sentiment expressed, just too funny.
    - pxc 2y ago
      Specialization is wonderful and makes great things possible, but it also tends to inflict a certain kind of brain damage. Specialists! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kevincox 2y ago
  Well that bothers the linguist in me, typically only relevant information is included when contrasting two items. So while in general you can't assume the negation of the implication, in conversation it is generally expected that if I say "I switched from X to Y because it is my favourite colour" you should be able to assume that X is not my favourite colour.

panick21_ 2y ago

> The glasses are too good for pure market thinking. This argument never made sense to me. Of course if you go to the big glass retailers. That just sounds like dumb marketing. It clearly would require a smaller retailer that could disrupt. The people you have to convince to buy these are the direct consumers who carry the cost. Combine that maybe with some financial products to make it easy to acquire or directly cooperate with drinks companies, or distribution companies. Or I mean there are lots of other potential markets for glass. At the very least they are not telling the full story here. If this glass is really so amazingly superior, and such a no-brainer, then somebody could have saved a lot of money here. More likely the company was just not positioned or lead well enough to figure out a strategy. At the vary least I need more then a one supporter with skin in the game saying 'we were just to good'. I have heard that often and its sometimes true, more often it isn't.

iSnow 2y ago
The first years of post-reunification were not good years for innovative companies from the former GDR. There was lack of money for investments unless you got sold to Western investors who might or might not have understood the value of your product. Eastern companies notoriously had old machines and low productivity and no experience in sales & marketing. Wages had to be paid in hard currency all of a sudden while traditional markets in the East did not have this hard currency. Western markets usually were already very competitive (as mentioned in the article where they tried to sell to Western Germany a couple of years before). Additionally, there was no internet back then, so crowdfunding wasn't available, direct selling to consumers was very hard, and sophisticated market places did not exist. I know those glasses, they were indeed very good, but kind of out of fashion in the early 90's.
6510 2y ago
I'm a big fan of Duralex, I've inherited a lot of their glasses. They look nice, feel good, I've always used them. They remind me of my mum, my aunt and my grandma. I've also never purchased any. There is no reason to think they won't last another 100 years? Is there?

aeyes 2y ago

To me the most surprising property to this day is how thin and light these glasses were. They are almost as thin as a modern wine glass but I don't remember ever breaking one accidentally. Edit: The article is poorly researched. The design pictured wasn't the only design they sold, it was just the most common one used in restaurants and bars. I had these glasses with kids prints. I found a page which shows a few more designs: https://militariasammlermarkt.de/ddr/zum-thema-ddr-ostalgie/3480/superfest-bierglas-0-25-liter-mit-logo-veb-sachsenglas-schwepnitz-ddr-lausitzer-glas https://militariasammlermarkt.de/ddr/zum-thema-ddr-ostalgie/...

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
They specifically mentioned they had a range of glasses, so don't know why you say it's poorly researched: > For their range of glasses – which included variants for champagne, schnapps and cognac as well as three different sizes for beer – the designer trio were inspired by the equally beautiful so-called Wirteglas, which the East German designers Margarete Jahny and Erich Müller created in the early 1970s.
- Retric 2y ago
  He’s referring to the patterns on the glass not the shape of the glass. > One factor that may have hindered Superfest’s competitiveness in a unified Germany was its functionalist, austere look. Especially in southern parts of the country, drinkers like to swig their beer from glasses decorated with gold edging or engraved coats of arms. “Baroque decoration on a Superfest glass wouldn’t work,” says Höhne. “It would violate the design itself.” The 6th image in the carousel on that page shows gold rimmed glasses with a decorative design, hardly an austere look.
  - cududa 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago

bravura 2y ago

Then can someone explain why the obscene and completely ludicrous "pfand" token system is so common still in Eastern Germany?

c-fe 2y ago
Its common everywhere in germany and also other countries, and why is it obscene and ludicrous?
- thecosmicfrog 2y ago
  It has just been introduced in Ireland under the name "Re-turn".
- jonp888 2y ago
  Since he mentions a "token", I don't think he means the recycling system, but rather than whenver you visit a festival/sports events etc., you typically have to pay a deposit of €2 for the cup your drink is served in. Before you leave you have to return the cup for a refund. Sometimes you also get issued a "token" and the refund is only possible with the token, so you can't return other cups you find lying around.
  - bravura 2y ago
    It's the concept of a pfand system that involves a token. The token is ridiculous and makes no sense. I've actively interrogated GPT4 on it and it becomes increasingly nonsensical trying to explain it. Possession of the cup itself is proof in itself that I possess the item of value worth the pfand. The token itself is pointless.
Mordisquitos 2y ago
There is nothing wrong with the "pfand" system and I wish we had it here in Spain. However, the recycling industry actively lobbies against it [0]. [0] (in Spanish) https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ecoembes/miente-investigacion-evidencia-fiasco-gestion-residuos-envases-espana https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ecoembes/miente-investigacion-...

distantsounds 2y ago

ah, you can get bongs made in the USA with similar strength. https://tankglass.com/ https://tankglass.com/

tristor 2y ago

What annoys me about this is that due to recyclability they are going to replace the borosilicate glass formula with one made off soda-lime glass. Soda-lime glass is significantly less durable in heat/cool cycles, and part of the point of high-durability glass is it's reusability! Germany, like many parts of the world, in the name of being green has gone all-in on recycling but fail to remember the green trifecta and it's priority ordering: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. That is, recycling is a /last resort/. If they continued with the prior borosilicate based formula these could be high-temperature sanitized and reused when making bottles and it works better for the hot/cold cycles typical of high temperature sanitization and cool wash-downs used in commercial bar settings. The same thing happened to the Pyrex brand. It used to be the gold standard for glass bakeware because it was made from borosilicate glass which made it much more drop resistant /and/ better for heat/cool cycles. Now Pyrex branded products have gone to being made predominantly of soda-lime based formulas and newer Pyrex dishes are known for being prone to exploding when you move a casserole prepped the night before from the fridge/freezer to the oven. I really wish we still had seriously durable high-quality products available and we weren't regressing to lowest common denominator across our society. Soda-lime glass is not a buy-it-for-life product, regardless of what you do to the formula.

fencepost 2y ago

For people talking about glass recycling, it's not NEARLY as simple as you might think because of input issues. Along with CoE (Coefficient of Expansion) concerns that may arise depending on the exact input materials, recycling ends up with grit and contaminants in the material, and those end up as inclusions in final products. That might not be a concern for glass blocks, but for anything where you care about the end quality (food containers, large sheets of glass for windows, etc.) inclusions can result in a lot of production loss. It's also not like you can just melt it and let the inclusions float or sink out - molten glass doesn't flow like water, and particles don't just move through it.

morsch 2y ago
Complicated, but routinely done? Glass recycling seems to be routine and widespread. Glass containers and jars, that is, not drinking glasses.
- fencepost 2y ago
  It's absolutely routinely done and there's a lot of PCR glass used, but there's also a significant amount of cleaning needed. I'm not involved in the industry beyond past interest in glasswork, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were packaging changes happening all along that improve the simplify cleaning - eg chemically soluble ink printing on containers instead of glued paper or composite labels.
tgtweak 2y ago
This is why they have green and brown bottles in beverage industries, they're typically lower down the recycling chain so impurities and mixed silicates can be used without affecting the end use. I don't think this glass is any less prone to recycling than standard sodium glass since it looks to be a post process with largely the same input materials.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  Green, but especially brown, also protects photosensitive contents (eg beer).

jiehong 2y ago

You know Kintsugi, this Chinese and Japanese ceramic repair art by making the repair shine? Maybe we could try to do that with standard glass glasses.

deleted 2y ago

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ngcc_hk 2y ago

Usual problem - a glass that last meant a company that broke. Same for lamp. Not sure whether communism under a foreign power helps here.

complaintdept 2y ago

Corning used to make these bowls (called "Grab and Go", I think) that were very difficult to break. You could cook in them, eat out of them with utensils that damage normal ceramic (like a Ti spork), and probably throw them out of your kitchen window onto cement and they'd be fine. They sold off the patent to some other company that couldn't afford the production and quality went way down -- I think prod required intense heat and/or pressure. Sad times.

bombcar 2y ago
Sounds like the Pyrex story - apparently "old Pyrex" is well regarded and desired, "new Pyrex" is crap. https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-between-two-pyrex-types/ https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-be...
tdeck 2y ago
The new company is called Corelle and they make a pretty durable range dishes and bowls out of the same material. I don't think I've ever broken one by dropping it, however if you drop a ceramic knife blade onto one of them the Corelle will immediately fracture for some reason.
- rpdillon 2y ago
  Corelle is legit, anecdotally. Have had a set of Corelle since 2004, have yet to break a single item. Mostly, dishwasher cycles are slowly eating away at the edges of the plates and bowls, but given its been 20 years, I'm OK with that. I'm not like the guy mentioned in another comment that throws his dishes onto the counter and into the cabinet, though.

BenFranklin100 2y ago

Rule #1: Never read a Guardian article about East Germany.

yokoprime 2y ago

Is this like a prince rupert's drop? i assume this completely explodes when it breaks.

jdfedgon 2y ago

There's this anecdote, somehow connected to this topic. Some decades ago, a manufacturer from East Germany, former GDR, was participating at a fair for lights and light bulbs. This manufacturer invented a light bulb that never burns its glow wire. At some point during the fair the companies from West Germany had a big laugh on that manufacturer, mocking him and his invention. Their argument: If you build a bulb like this, how are you going to make money? Now, I cannot say why we don't have glasses like this already but my assumption is that the monetary incentive is seen as being contradictory to such an invention.

occamschainsaw 2y ago
This actually happened much earlier in the first half of the 20th century. It was an international cartel with household names (GE, Osram, Phillips etc). "The cartel tested their bulbs and fined manufacturers for bulbs that lasted more than 1,000 hours." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy
lesuorac 2y ago
I mean if you don't already have a large light bulb business this sounds like a great idea. Make a million light bulbs and sell all of them and then do whatever it is that you want. Similar to finding a cure for cancer. There's a huge market that you can just eliminate and then retire.
cleansy 2y ago
That and producing these glasses with said technique is a lot more expensive. You need to heat up the glass and the potassium nitrate to 500C, mostly over hours because otherwise the glass breaks. Then you need to keep it for a couple of hours, then cool down slowly. What made the initial east german production work is, they did it on a large industrial scale, but even then the energy that you need makes the glasses quite expensive to produce. It's hard to justify buying 6-7€ for a regular drinking cup when a comparable form factor is 1€ or something in this region.
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

ianbicking 2y ago

"The problem with the original Superfest glass is that its manufacturers worked with modified alumino or borosilicate glass, which is not as easy to recycle as the more common soda-lime glass. So Soulbottles’ challenge is to produce glass that is both durable and recyclable." Why would they care about recycling it? It's not a disposable product. If it breaks you can't recycle it anyway (at least in the US recyclers don't want broken glass). Isn't durable good enough? Or is this a result of Germany's obsessive recycling culture?

sofixa 2y ago
> If it breaks you can't recycle it anyway (at least in the US recyclers don't want broken glass) In France glass is explicitly broken upon deposit at the recycle bin. I'd guess it's the same in Germany. > Or is this a result of Germany's obsessive recycling culture God forbid anyone thinks a little bit ahead to avoid extra waste.
- ianbicking 2y ago
  You can't recycle ceramics but I don't think it's wasteful to use ceramics. You should just use them as a durable good that is kept and used as long as possible.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    Ceramics are literally millennia old as a concept. It'd be a bit shortsighted to introduce new materials today and not think about its full lifecycle.
    - ianbicking 2y ago
      Highly durable goods generally require a lot of energy input, because to break the thing you have to exert more energy than was used to construct the item. Or you can think of it that you use a high-energy state when you want it to be malleable, so it is far from that state during normal use. In ceramics, for instance, when you fire to a higher temperature you can create a more durable piece. (Of course you can make a flawed item that lacks this durability.) The very thing that makes an item durable also makes it hard to recycle, something that is hard to break is also hard to decompose and recompose into a new item. Also you should only invest all that energy into creating something if you plan to use it for a long time. A highly durable glass cup is great... but only if you use it for a long time. If you recycle it you've failed. The literal mass of the finished glass is trivial compared to the energy invested in creating it.

n0b1m 2y ago

[flagged]

doener 2y ago

This reminds me of a column in DIE ZEIT from 1999 on the subject of the planned obsolescence of light bulbs: "Is it actually true that light bulb manufacturers could have produced light bulbs with an almost unlimited life a long time ago, but don't want to in order to stay in business? Rainer Mauersberger, Tucson (USA) I don't want to speculate here about the motives of the light bulb manufacturers, but just want to list a few facts. 1. every light bulb (as it is correctly called) has a limited service life because tungsten atoms constantly evaporate from the filament and the wire breaks at some point. 2. how long the wire lasts can be "adjusted", for example by making it thicker or thinner. However, if you make it glow less brightly and thus increase its service life, the already poor efficiency drops even further - a standard light bulb only converts four percent of the electrical energy into light. 3) Since December 24, 1924, there has in fact been an international "light bulb cartel", which was essentially controlled by the companies General Electric (USA), Osram/Siemens (Germany) and Associated Electrical Industries (Great Britain). This cartel not only divided up the global markets among themselves, but also reached agreements on how long a light bulb should last - since the Second World War, this has been 1,000 hours. In the Soviet Union and Hungary, there have always been bulbs with a longer service life; the Chinese bulb still burns for 5000 hours today. 4) The inventor Dieter Binninger developed a light bulb with a considerably longer life expectancy, which he also patented. His three improvements: a new form of filament filament, a glass bulb filled with noble gas and a diode as a "dimmer". The Binninger bulb lasted 150,000 hours and consumed only around 50 percent more energy than an ordinary bulb for the same light output. Binninger produced the light bulbs himself, but then negotiated with the Treuhand to take over the GDR company Narva. Shortly after submitting his offer, the light bulb revolutionary crashed in a private plane in 1991. 5 Today, light bulbs are no longer manufactured in the new federal states. Light bulbs in the western world still have a life span of 1000 hours. Christoph Drösser Translated with DeepL.com (free version)" https://www.zeit.de/stimmts/1999/199933_stimmts_gluehbir https://www.zeit.de/stimmts/1999/199933_stimmts_gluehbir

BobAliceInATree 2y ago
Technology Connections did a whole video on the pros & cons of longer-lasting incandescents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY

r3trohack3r 2y ago

> But the main reason for its decline, paradoxically, was its strength. Glass retailers who play by the rules of the market live off the fact that their products break, so they can sell more. A glass that didn’t break was a threat to profits. I've heard this story repeated multiple times but I've never bought it. Unless there is a glass cartel, i.e. crony capitalism, I have a hard time believing that consumers wouldn't storm the gates for unbreakable glassware. If I were a bar owner, and I had near 100% restocking of my glassware annually (which I believe is in the ballpark of the actual number), I would be willing to bypass my supply chain and order these glasses directly from the manufacturer. I can't see how someone couldn't make a decent living off the addressable market of one time sales of this glassware. This doesn't seem like it is a true market dynamic - but I might be missing something.

rajnathani 2y ago
The thought process which I have here is that decades ago when the supply chains were more dis-intermediated than they are today (due to higher information asymmetry due to lower speed communication than we have today), that it could've naturally resulted in distributors to gravitate towards less durable glass without necessarily forming any cartels as such. It is technically still possible in today's age too, but very likely to a much lesser extent.

jokethrowaway 2y ago

The best alternative is Aluminium oxynitride, a bulletproof transparent ceramic. It's kind of expensive, though. Would you buy a lifetime glass for 500$?

Brechreiz 2y ago

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schappim 2y ago

Previous discussion [1]: Superfest – The almost unbreakable East German Glass (2021) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260399

idkwhatiamdoing 2y ago

This kickstarter worked together with some researchers to bring back to live exactly that kind of glass! Today I actually received the link to place my order from the pledge https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulkupfer/ultraglass-stronger-and-lighter-bottles-with-ion-technology https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulkupfer/ultraglass-s...

samstave 2y ago

I love this. While we are talking Neat! glass: Ball Aerospace is where you want to focus for a sec as well. Ball aerospace basically is the secret tech gian few know about - specifically in their high-end lenses for all the nifty spy thingies... But the Ball Brothers did a bunch of other nifty things - my favorite being the Mason Jar. -- What I like about this story, is how it reignites the vision I have for a stackable Mason Jar thats unbreakable such as the German glass. - but as a core packaging line. I have a large number of mason jars as my primary drinking vessels - but I want a service, like the milk-men of olde, and have a fully functional closed loop product, package delivery infra built on high tech mason jars, stackable, made from unbreakable-ish things, inclusive of glass foams (aerogels in the walls based on 3d printing a microfoam of glass then encasing it... and having a ceramic induction coil in the base of the glass so you can use an induction coaster (of varying size) to heat/ cook that which is in the mason jar... the jars interlock so you can stack extension tubes onto them. but all based on mason jar everything. aside from the hyper stackable. (Also I noteced that the drop science behind that beer glass is that it provides the lip for you to rest it in your hand, and its designed to not break from the angle that a drunk person most typically drops his drink - too drunk, and has a week grip - so it just slips straight down... mostly) https://www.ball.com/our-company/our-story/history-timeline https://www.ball.com/our-company/our-story/history-timeline https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-ball-aerospace-to-develop-noaas-geoxo-sounder-instrument/ https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-ball-aerospac...

14 2y ago

So weird when I mention something at home then few hours later see the exact thing here. The other day I broke a glass then yesterday my dad broke a glass then today my son broke a glass. We are not usually like this but just one of those fluke weeks where we all did it. I was telling my mom that there used to be a glass that was almost unbreakable and could take much more of a hit but that I didn't think they made them any more. I would love to get a set of these glasses and yes I would pay a bit more for them.

colonwqbang 2y ago

> But the main reason for its decline, paradoxically, was its strength. Glass retailers who play by the rules of the market live off the fact that their products break, so they can sell more. A glass that didn’t break was a threat to profits. It would be interesting to have some supporting evidence for this conspiracy theory. Perhaps the Guardian expects us to buy it because it plays into our preconceptions about evil capitalists vs. morally pure socialists.

plewd 2y ago
Not exactly the most reliable supporting evidence, but Veritasium has a video which talks about this stuff. https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE?feature=shared https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE?feature=shared

madsen954 2y ago

I remember one accident I had when I was a kid walking up the stairs, holding one of those glasses in my hand, stumbled and banged the glass loudly against the stone of the stairs. Everyone was looking at me but apart from the loud kloink noise nothing happened to the glass.

fuzzfactor 2y ago

When Benjamin Franklin was still alive there was no other place to get extra-strong heat-resistant glassware suitable for chemical experimentation other than obscure locations in what is now Germany, with their secret techniques developed over a period of centuries at the least. I would say it helps to start early. I really do get the idea that in pre-literate times some scientific progress was continued over many generations more impressively by lifetimes of hands-on incremental advances, rather than through documentation which could only be deciphered by the few, and utilized by even fewer.

darig 2y ago

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