GLASS WORKERS5 ARMOR

Evening Star, Issue 18532, 15 January 1924, Page 6

GLASS WORKERS 5 ARMOR

Visitors to a Chicago optical factory, unprepared for what they might see as they entered the main works, would be truly horrified to find themselves in the company of hundreds of ghostlike figures just about as gruesome in appearance as could be imagined. Clothed from head to waist in a padded costume of cream cotton wool, the face entirely enclosed in a white cork mask, except for the eyes, which peeped unseen, through tinted talc goggles, the women wearing white skirts and the men overalls of a similar hue, busy gangs of operatives pursue their task. Their strange costumes are designed to protect them against the attack of millions of glass particles so fine as not to he seen by the naked eye. Anyone casually walking through the long rows of benches would perceive no need for any such precaution—that is until told that if these men and women w’ero to sit at their jobs ordinarily attired they wmuld lose their sight in a week, and their skins would be permanently affected with a rash impossible to cure. In this particular factory a process is employed in the manufacture of lenses, in which segments of pebbles and glass are treated as they are whirled around in lathes. Whilst this is going on, the atmosphere is charged with atoms of glass, which travel at a terrific speed from their points of origin and with such velocity that they embed themselves right under the skin of a worker anywhere near—that is, if no protective device is employed. A few' hours afterwards, extreme irritation is experienced, and this proves to be the forerunner of considerable evils. Bearing this alternative in mind, the people employed -willingly make up as “ ghosts,” hmvevor gruesome their appearance necessarily becomes. ,