Today we will talk about PYREX GLASSWARE that we all know and love, also known as #PYREX!

™ "Pyrex" is the name given by the American company Corning Inc. to the *heat-resistant* glass cookware it first made in 1915, it is basically THE NAME OF A BRAND!

They have been on the market FOR 100 YEARS and have become so popular that their brand name is now almost synonymous with the cookware itself! That's successful marketing, right?!

BUT WHAT DOES "HEAT-RESISTANT" MEAN?

It means that it can withstand more than *ordinary* glass in sudden temperature changes without breaking! The material from which the cookware is made (usually borosilicate glass) has low thermal expansion, meaning its volume does not increase much when its temperature rises, unlike other materials!

So we can use it in high and low temperatures (e.g. oven, freezer) and it is quite resistant to thermal shock - it does not risk breaking because a certain part of it (let's say the base) suddenly gets hotter than the rest of its surface!

NOW LET'S TALK A BIT ABOUT HISTORY!

Borosilicate glass was first invented by German chemist Otto Schott in 1893, 22 years before Pyrex was created! Otto opened his own company and started selling his products under the name "Duran".

In 1908, the head of the research department of another company, Corning Inc., who had learned about Otto's invention while doing his doctorate in Germany, created Nonex! Nonex was a low thermal expansion borosilicate glass, which was used in train lanterns and other industrial products.

A few years later, an engineer at Corning Inc., Jesse Littleton, took it a step further! Because his wife was tired of buying dishes that easily broke in the oven, he brought her a piece of Nonex glass from his laboratory to try as a baking dish! Everything went well, the food was cooked without any issues, and a new product was born!

Corning Inc., after removing the lead (!) contained in Nonex, created a series of household cookware and named them Pyrex! Pyrex was released on the market during World War I as an *American* alternative to German Duran products! (Germany was not very popular during that period, as you can imagine)

I won't bore you anymore with the company's history, but its products became very popular and soon found their way into almost every household in all corners of the planet!

FUN FACT

Borosilicate glass is not only used for cookware! Due to its durability, it is used in many different things: laboratory equipment, industrial production, medical devices, even telescopes!

In fact, the - impressive for its time - Hale Telescope, which started being built in the USA in 1928 and was completed in 1949, had a 5-meter diameter mirror made of Pyrex glass from Corning Inc.!