Triplex

Triplex (from the Latin. «triplex» - «triple»), the so-called safety glass - multi-layered glass. Usually, these are two or more glasses, glued together by a special polymer film or photo-curable chemical composition capable of holding fragments of glass in the event of a strong impact. Such a laminated glass is made, as a rule, by pressing during heating.


Triplex
Triplex
Triplex was invented in France, in 1909, by a French artist, composer, writer, and chemical scientist Edouard Benedictus. The circumstances of the invention of triplex are as follows. In 1903, inadvertently dropping a tube filled with the remnants of a solution of nitrocellulose, Edward Benedictus noticed that the glass was cracked, but not scattered into pieces. The solvent in the test tube evaporated long ago, and the nitrocellulose settled on the inner surface of the test tube in the form of a thin film. Being impressed by the newspaper reports of injuries inflicted by crashing automotive glass, Benedictus immediately took up the experiments. In 1909 he received a patent for protective glass.
Use of Triplex
Use of Triplex

In 1911, Benedictus created a company that produced the first windshields (“triplex”) for cars according to his patent in order to reduce the number of victims of car accidents. For this purpose, a sheet of celluloid (plastic based on cellulose nitrate), bonded between two glasses, was used. The production of such glass was slow and laborious, which made it quite expensive.

Today, triplex is used mainly for glazing vehicles (windshields of cars, railway rolling stock, airplanes, ships, etc.), windows and facades of buildings, armored vehicles (observation devices and protective glasses of sights). There are special triplexes with enhanced noise absorbing properties, electrically heated, colored, specular, electrochromic, etc.

Margaret

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