Part III: The miracle of Glass: strength and purity and a global communications revolution

The invention of fibre optical cables took glass beyond transparency into a backbone that enables computerised 1s and 0s to be transformed into the socio-economic experiences of the 21st century

In Part I, 'Sight Beyond Limits: How Our Limited Vision Sparked a Scientific, technological and Social Revolution,' and Part II, 'Glass, lenses and the Transcendence of the Natural Limits of Human Vision,' we saw just what an extraordinary invention glass turned out to be.

A world without glass would strike at the foundations of modern progress. As we s…