Flexible glass
{{Short description|Alleged lost invention}}
{{For|modern uses of the term|optical fiber|Willow Glass}}
Flexible glass is an alleged lost invention from the time of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. The story is often doubted.{{Cite book |last=Carrier |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qu07DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT266 |title=The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire |date=2017-12-01 |publisher=Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA) |isbn=978-1-63431-107-6 }}
Mythology
According to Petronius ({{circa|27 AD|66 AD}}) in his work Satyricon, the inventor of flexible glass (vitrum flexile) brought a drinking bowl made of the material before Tiberius Caesar. The bowl was put through a test to break it, but it merely dented, rather than shattering. The inventor repaired the bowl very easily with a small hammer, which he pulled from a pocket in his toga, according to Petronius. After the inventor swore that he was the only man alive who knew the manufacturing technique, Tiberius had the man beheaded. It has been suggested this was either to protect the existing glassmaking industry,{{Cite book |last=Reynolds |first=Terry S. |title=Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel |date=31 July 2002 |publisher=JHU Press |isbn=978-0-8018-7248-8 |pages=36 |language=English}} to ensure that glass remained breakable as an effective planned obsolescence or because he feared that the glass would devalue gold and silver, since the material might be more valuable.{{Cite book |last=Petronius |url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Petr.+51&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0027 |title=Satyricon |chapter=Section 51 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221113023204/https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Petr.+51&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0027 |archive-date=2022-11-13 |url-status=live}}
Pliny the Elder ({{circa|23 AD|79 AD}}) also included the story about the flexible glass in his encyclopedic work Naturalis Historia (XXXVI.66.195), but added that the story is "more widely spread than well authenticated".{{cite book |author=Pliny the Elder |url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D66 |title=Natural History XXXVI.66 |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240127165137/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D66 |archive-date=2024-01-27 |url-status=live}}
Later during the Early Middle Ages, the story was retold by Isidore of Seville ({{circa|560 AD|636 AD}}) in Etymologiae (XVI.16.6), De vitro, which in turn is included in pseudo-Heraclius's 13th-century collection of technical recipes.{{cite book |title=The Etymologies |author=Isidore of Seville |translator=Stephen A. Barney |translator2=W. J. Lewis |translator3=J. A. Beach |translator4=Oliver Berghof |year=2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-83749-9 |page=328}}
Although these stories are, without justification, often imagined to be either false or exaggerated, the historian Robert Jacobus Forbes believed that flexile referred to "bent" glass, such as handles used in stoneware.{{Cite book |last=Forbes |first=Robert James |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u6Y3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA173 |title=Studies in Ancient Technology |date=1965 |publisher=Brill Archive |page=173 |language=en}}