Glass goes back 26 million years, but I got a gift just the other day

The other day my sister sent me a gift. It was a pair of drinking glasses. There is a history of glassware in my family.

• 1964 Milk Glass

  I was born in New Orleans in 1959. In 1960, my family moved to 4110 Morgan Street, in Little Neck, New York. I can remember snowball fights, riding a sled down the street, backyard barbecues, the 1964 World's Fair, the Statue of Liberty, and watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1964, my family moved back to New Orleans. On the drive from New York to New Orleans, we stopped for breakfast at a Howard Johnson's. I had not finished my milk when it was time to get back on the road, so our waitress let me take my glass of milk with me. My college graduation ceremony was on May 17, 1981. My 22^nd birthday was on May 18, 1981. I left home for my first full-time post-college job on May 19, 1981. I took very few things with me, but one of them was that glass I got in 1964.

• 1990 Jam Jar

  My brother knows the story of the Howard Johnson's glass. When our son, Steven, was born, he wanted to start a new tradition. He bought identical jam jars, that when empty, become drinking glasses. He kept one. He gave me one. Now our families have matching glasses from our first visit to New Orleans after our son's birth. When I die, I hope that glass finds its way into the hands of our son.

• 2016 Map Glass

  Since I work in San Francisco, and Autodesk is about making places, things, and media, my sister saw a San Francisco bicycle map etched into drinking glasses and thought of me. She actually mailed the package to my work so my teammates could share in the fun. Those glasses are keepers too.

Speaking of glass, in his book, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World, author Steven Johnson recounts how the innovation of glass came to be:

• About 26 million years ago, a comet collided with earth's atmosphere over the Libyan desert, exploded, and melted grains of silica to form glass.

• About 10,000 years ago, a traveler stumbled across the glass, collected a piece, and fashioned it into a scarab beetle brooch. Thus began man's fascination with glass.

• With the fall of Constantinople in 1204, glass makers fled to Venice.

• Blowing glass in Venice often caused fires, so glassblowers were relegated to the nearby island of Murano. With such concentration around one industry, Murano became an innovation hub that eventually lead to the invention of clear glass.

• Monasteries in the 12^th and 13^th centuries discovered that curved clear glass had a magnifying effect when reading religious manuscripts. This eventually lead to the invention of reading glasses — "disks for the eyes."

• In 1400, glass blowers combined their talents with metallurgy to make mirrors. The popularity of mirrors among artists lead to the creation of self-portraits (the original selfie).

• In 1440, Gutenberg invented the printing press. With the widespread distribution of books, people suddenly realized they were far-sighted, and thousands of spectacle makers' businesses began to thrive.

• In 1590, successful spectacle maker, Zacharias Janssen, experimented with lining up two lenses to invent the microscope.

• In 1610, a cluster of Dutch lens makers, including Zacharias Janssen, invented the telescope.

• Using the microscope, Robert Hooke discovered the cell in 1660.

• In 1887, Charles Vernon Boys used a thin strand of glass as a balance beam to weigh very small objects. He found that glass was very strong for its weight.

• After lying undisturbed for thousands of years, in 1922, the burial chamber of Tutankhamen was unearthed, revealing the scarab beetle brooch.

• Based on the work of Boys, fiberglass was invented in 1950.

• In 1970, Corning Glassworks created a glass that was so clear, a piece as thick as a bus would appear like a typical window pane. Bell Labs combined this technology with pulses of light to create fiber optic cable.

• Today mirror-powered telescopes at the W M Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea (Hawaii) allow mankind to see beyond our galaxy.

So the glasses I am keeping and passing on now can be rooted back to about 26 million years ago.

Glass is alive in the lab.