GLASS FOR CLOTHES

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 350, 3 February 1937, Page 8

GLASS FOR CLOTHES

New Fabrics Evolved in America

(Own Correspondent—By Air Mail.)' LONDON, Dee. y.

Glass has certainly been in the news recently, but for every million who know that the Crystal Palace was burned down, I doubt if one saw the announcement from America that glass has now been spun into thread out of which garments can be woven. Whether glass fabrics will be used. «»ommercially depends on their having qualities which cannot be found in rival fabrics,, and glass fabric has one very useful quality: it can be washed easily in warm nitric acid This would revQiutionise the cleaning industrv. Of course all these strange searches after new fabrics are largely artificial and due to absurd economic restrictions to international trade. Thus Mussolini’s milk-wool is only an attempt to defeat quota barriers, and so too Hitler’s fabric spun out of meat It is claimed however, that thread iron) meat has a real advantage in that it can be easily sterilised and used tor sutures in surgery; but it the wond were not economically mad, Ger mana vould not be using their technical genius on turning leather straps into thread.

Meanwhile, in England a much more revolutionary search for new material is going on. If you knew where to look you could see several acres covered with a plant out of which some day commercial rubber may be produced We have not been as successful so far in this search as Russia, which hopes to be independent of .foreign supplies of rubber within a very short