As the red glass slowly cools, it begins to solidify. At the same time, as the red color fades, the glass slowly turns white and becomes transparent.
Liu Jin held a pair of scissors in his hand and cut the glass at the joint. After the glass slowly cooled down, he clamped it with pliers and began to observe it slowly and carefully.
"Yes, yes, the glass was successfully fired for the first time. However, the color of the glass is still not pure enough. The color is yellowish. It seems that we need to continue experimenting and find a way to remove this color.
.”
"There are very few bubbles, and they are very small. If we stir more, stir more, and increase the temperature, we should be able to get rid of all the bubbles."
Liu Jin nodded with satisfaction as he watched the glass cool down and condense into a spherical mass.
The requirements for firing glass for the first time should not be too high. Originally, Liu Jin thought that it would be good if he could just bake the glass. Unexpectedly, the glass fired for the first time was already quite good in all aspects.
"The color is yellowish, probably because there is some kind of substance in the raw materials. I remember that in the history of glass in Europe, the glass in the early hundreds of years was green glass, and everyone has always thought that this glass is green.
It cannot be changed."
"The green color is because the glass contains a small amount of iron. The reactant of iron forms ferrous iron. The compound of ferrous iron makes the color of the glass green."
"The glass is now yellowish. This should be related to the iron element in it. We must find a way to remove this."
Liu Jin analyzed it carefully, but Liu Jin did not ask the system for help with this fired glass, because the points were hard-earned and he could only save them when he could. Liu Jin would only go to the system for help when there was really no other way.
"Brother Jin, is this Liuli?"
On the other side, Zhao Erhu, who was holding the blower, also looked curiously at the glass in Liu Jin's hand, very curious.
"Well, it's called Liuli, but this thing is a rarity in our Ming Dynasty. It's very common here in Europe, so it's not a big deal."
Liu Jin nodded, then continued to take out some glass from the stove, poured the glass into a special rectangular frame, and when it cooled, a sheet of glass was formed.
"We must replace all the windows in the future. The light in the room is really too dark."
Seeing the glass made by himself, Liu Jin couldn't help but said that the windows in this era were so small and opaque that the room was very dark. Even during the day, it felt eerie.
Liu Jin was very unaccustomed to it and always felt it was too dark.
"Hu~hu~"
Soon, Liu Jin took out some glass again, took out a blowing stick that had been prepared long ago, and started blowing the glass.
Glass blowing is a technical job. It was obvious that Liu Jin, who was blowing glass for the first time, had a sore cheek and could not produce anything decent.
"Fortunately~ Fortunately, at least this is a glass. Although it is a bit ugly, at least it can be used for drinking tea. Well, I must keep it. It is also very good as a souvenir."
Liu Jin was holding a glass bottle that he had blown by himself. This bottle was very ugly and certainly not neat, let alone beautiful. But after all, he blew it by himself. No matter how ugly it was, he still liked it.
In the next few days, Liu Jin didn't go anywhere, focusing on firing glass, constantly trying various methods, and the quality of the fired glass was getting better and better.
"Haha~ Finally, we have fired colorless glass. The quality of this glass is very good, not even a single bubble can be seen. It can definitely be used to make telescopes."
Five days later, when the latest furnace of glass was fired, Liu Jin burst into laughter. After several days of repeated experiments and attempts, Liu Jin finally produced colorless glass.
"This glass is coated with a mixture of mercury and tin, and it becomes a mirror. This mirror can make money~"
Looking at the colorless and transparent glass, Liu Jin's eyes were filled with money.
You must know that in this era, even in Europe where there is a lot of glass, mirrors are still very high-end things.
The first real mirror in history was in 1507 in Venice, Italy, a place famous for making glass. The locals inadvertently smeared some metallic liquid on the glass, and the first glass mirror was born.
Its appearance caused a sensation throughout Europe at that time, and it became the new favorite of the princes and nobles. They all rushed to buy mirrors at high prices. When the Queen of France got married, the King of Venice gave a very small glass mirror as a gift, which was considered very valuable.
A precious gift, its value at that time was 150,000 francs.
Because mirrors are so valuable, the Venetians even enacted strict laws to protect the manufacturing methods of mirrors. Anyone who leaked the manufacturing methods of mirrors would be sentenced to death, and the place where mirrors were produced was placed in a closed and isolated area.
on the small island.
Relying on this method, the Venetians kept the manufacturing method of mirrors secret for more than 150 years, and no one knew how much money they made from mirrors.
It is now the tenth year of Hongzhi, 1497 AD. To be precise, although there is colorless glass in Europe now, the glass mirror has not been invented yet. It will take ten years for this glass mirror to appear.
Traditional mirrors are generally bronze mirrors. Although the clarity of bronze mirrors is not bad, it is far behind glass mirrors. This is why glass mirrors are so popular in Europe.
As European colonists colonized all over the world, glass mirrors also spread to all parts of the world. Almost everywhere they went, they immediately became items that princes and nobles in various places rushed to buy.
If nothing else, the Europeans have robbed huge amounts of wealth from all over the world just by selling this glass mirror.
"Colorless and transparent glass is a good thing. With you, not only can you make a small amount of money, but you can also make telescopes and microscopes. It has many uses. It is useful for studying natural sciences, especially cosmic astronomy, and biopathology.
It has extraordinary significance.”
Liu Jin looked at the colorless transparent glass in his hand, and a smile appeared on his face. European astronomy and biomedicine can develop very rapidly in this era, which is definitely inseparable from this thing.
With colorless glass, telescopes can be made, and telescopes are absolutely indispensable for cosmic astronomy. Microscopes can also be made to observe the microscopic world, which can greatly promote the development of biomedicine.