The story of the safety glasses in vehicles. The glass that won’t shatter. Way back in 1888, Edouard Benedictus, a French chemist, was experimenting with a celluloid solution. The solution contained cellulose nitrate. The experiment was over. He closed the glass bottle with the celluloid solution and placed the bottle to the top of his shelf. Then he forgot about it.

The bottle sat there for fifteen years. One day in 1903, when Benedictus was searching for something in the shelf, the bottle slipped and fell down. For a moment, he thought that the entire room is going to be covered with glass pieces. What a miracle! Nothing happened. The bottle is lying on the floor, despite the glass being broken, not a single little piece has moved out. Like all the pieces are glued together. 

Benedictus reached down and grabbed the bottle. Looking at the label. he could see that the bottle contained celluloid solution. The alcohol, which was the solvent in the solution, had evaporated. Then only thing left in the bottle was the celluloid. How? The celluloid film glued the glasses together. Chemically speaking, the nitrocellulose in the solution played the trick. It was the one that acted as a glue. The scattered glass jugs together look like an art form. So he put the glass bottle in the living room as an exhibit. He wrote a note underneath it. What was in the bottle and so on. Then he forgot about it.

After some days, he heard about a car accident where a woman was severely injured by the shattered glass pieces of the car. Suddenly he realized the potential of the celluloid bottle—a technique for making a glass that does not explode. The glass of a vehicle must be made in that way. He ran straight into the lab, experiments began. He stayed in his lab all day and night. Soon, he made the laminated glass for vehicles.

What was the product he invented? 

He poured the celluloid solution over a glass sheet. Spread the same thickness. It was kept like that until the alcohol in the solution completely evaporated. When the thin solution evaporates, it shrinks, like glue. Then another glass sheet will be pressed on top of that. Then celluloid dough will stick to both glass layers. It results in the so-called ‘laminated’ glass. 

In 1909, he took a patent for that product, named it “Triplex,” meaning three-layer glass cell. 

In 1906, John C. Wood, an English scientist, produced a similar product. The glue he used to stick the glass plates was Canada Balsam, so the product was not well received, but Benedictus (Triplex) was well received and industrialized. With the advent of plastic resins, adhesives proved to be a good glue on celluloid, and with the use of highly resistant glass adhesives and cracking, the SafeGlass became safer and safer.