A factory for manufacturing mirrors called Saint-Gobain was established in France, but mirrors were still expensive luxuries and only the very rich owned it. In Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, developed the silvered-glass mirror where a thin layer of metallic silver is put onto glass by the chemical reduction of silver nitrate.
The invention of this process enabled to mirrors being manufactured on a much larger scale, and for the first time in history ordinary people could buy a mirror.
Present-day mirrors are more frequently produced by depositing aluminum by vacuum directly onto the glass. There are many superstitions including mirrors. Breaking a mirror to this day is said to bring bad luck that lasts seven years. This curse is believed to go back to Roman times when they thought that it took seven years for a soul to renew itself. One of the ways that you could avoid the bad luck was to bury all pieces of broken mirror very deeply in the ground.
It is also said that a mirror in the house falling from a wall is a sign that someone was going to die. A guild of mirror makers—the first recorded, was formed in the city of Nuremberg in , soon followed by a guild in the city of Venice.
Extremely rare and as costly as gemstones, these wall-hung crystal mirrors were highly prized by admirers far and wide, including Francis I, ruler of Mantua , who had them installed in the Castle of San Giorgio.
So important was mirror-making to the economy of Venice that guildsmen were sworn to uphold trade secrets upon penalty of death. In the rare instance in which a guildsman was permitted to travel outside the city, his family was held in hostage, and if the traveler failed to return home, forfeited their lives.
Did I not work wonders—some wheat for this beautiful mirror? Profit begets competition. In , Jean-Baptiste Colbert—appealing to Louis XIV for economic reform and endeavoring to keep in France the , crowns going out yearly to Italy for mirrors—managed to import 20 living Venetian glass workers into France. Established by royal initiative, this Manufacture des Glaces at the Saint-Gobain factory would greatly expand the production of mirrors.
Mirror is cited as critical to the discovery of linear perspective —making what is flat a painting appear to be in relief real life — by Renaissance artists. Compare what is reflected with your painting. Through the 18th century, technical and economic difficulties persisted in the manufacture of clear glass.
Before the mirror was invented, we had glimpsed our own reflections in water, or in polished metals, but never really seen ourselves. And that new understanding brought about a host of major changes to civilization. Before this, we thought of our ourselves as a part of a community.
Our identity was tied up with the people we knew, the place we lived in. He would be unable to make a living, borrow money, or trade goods. Imagine, instead, having your personality somehow removed, and you can get a feel of the real threat of exile in those times. As mirrors became available to the average person, society shifted. We no longer saw ourselves as drones in a hive of humans.
As early as the s, mathematicians noted that mirrors could potentially be used in telescopes instead of lenses; James Bradley used this knowledge to build the first reflecting telescope in [source: Panek ]. Despite the importance of this discovery, the fact remained that both were cost-prohibitive. The modern mirror is made by silvering , or spraying a thin layer of silver or aluminum onto the back of a sheet of glass. Justus Von Leibig invented the process in , but most mirrors are made today by heating aluminum in a vacuum, which then bonds to the cooler glass [source: Britannica ].
Mirrors are now used for all kinds of purposes, from LCD projection to lasers and car headlights. But how do mirrors actually work? Find out on the next page. According to legend, the ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes used an array of mirrors to defend his hometown of Syracuse against the Roman navy. By using the mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a single point, Archimedes' heat beam supposedly harnessed enough solar power to set the invading ships on fire and sink them.
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