Up: Glassmaking
Flat Glass: 16 of 66
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Even the luxury loving Charles II
(1660-1685) had no glazed windows in his palace.
At the close of the eighteenth century,
shortly after the Revolutionary War, there existed in Paris, the
world's most civilized capital, a large corporation engaged in the
manufacture of window sashes fitted with oiled paper.
Both France and Belgium reverted to this
expedient for enclosing their houses during the first days of
reconstruction after the close of the World War-- all the window
glass factories being destroyed or unable to resume operations.
The use of flat glass for windows did not
become general until the eighteenth century.
An indication of the fact that windows
were regarded as a luxury is found in the "window tax"
that was levied on these openings by the English government of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A similar tax still is
levied in France.
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