"In the case of the Superfest glass, the anonymity of the makers was also politically desired. The GDR’s regime preached solidarity and unity. The prevailing ideology regarded the collective more highly than the talents and abilities of the individual. Even though Superfest glasses were ubiquitous in every bar, canteen and household in the Soviet satellite state, few people had heard of Paul Bittner, Fritz Keuchel and Tilo Poitz, the design collective who gave them their shape."
Interesting how the article laments, that they did not name the designers, but then happily ignore the names of the actual inventors of the material:
"The groundbreaking technology they deployed was developed in the 1970s at the Department for Glass Structure Research at the Central Institute for Inorganic Chemistry near Dresden. The material scientists there knew that when glass breaks, it is typically due to microscopic cracks in the material’s surface which form during the production process. Dramatically increasing the toughness of the glass surface was possible, they found, by replacing the smaller sodium ions in the glass with electronically charged potassium ions. Potassium ions need more space, pressing harder against neighbouring atoms and building up more tension that needs to be overcome for the microscopic cracks to get bigger"
I believe the technology in itself, is a bit more admirable and rather the people involved mentioning, than those who were using it to shape a glass.
> "Even though Superfest glasses were ubiquitous in every bar, canteen and household in the Soviet satellite state, few people had heard of Paul Bittner, Fritz Keuchel and Tilo Poitz, the design collective who gave them their shape."
I guess that it is in the same way you do not hear about the engineers and designers at Apple, Space X, etc.
> I believe the technology in itself, is a bit more admirable and the people involved mentioning, than the mere shaping.
But we hear all the time about CEOs and their opinions, thou. And they are way less interesting that the tech and the engineers that work at their companies.
Yeah, how many designers and inventors of industrial processes, or materials, or techniques or such we know widely in the west?
Never mind that even for those well known to us engineers, regular people couldn't name what they did either, except maybe Edisson, Tesla, Wright Brothers, and a few more. E.g. would even more modern PhD holders know what Watt contributed? Or Lord Kelvin?
People like Gates, Bezos, Musk, and Jobs on the other hand, everybody knows.
Yes, the engineer CEOs like Gates, Musk and Jensen Huang certainly become very well known. Not so much for their engineering prowess (though it is typically great) but for being the symbol of the products they create.
I've listened to a (bad) podcast about women scientist and the host went on a rant about how the evil men took away from the real inventor of the fridge, that was a woman, to give it to a man.
I challenge anyone to name the inventor of the fridge. At least in my country it is completely unknown who it was.
The author of this podcast is a woman with a degree in physics. She failed to explain how a fridge works. She just mentioned the components. If I didn't know how it works I wouldn't have understood from what she said.
Maybe 5 years or so. Not like music where unrelated people are earning millions on royalties of Ravel’s pieces that they inherited because so far-away relatives were cleaning their living room.
Yes, but the claim was that some kind of fame was stolen from the "real inventor of the fridge" (sic).
And the parent's point is that the one considered the inventor atm (deservingly or not), hardly has any fame to begin with. Sure, he might have a Wikipedia entry, along with OnlyFans creators and every minor character in Star Wars lore. Including non-movie characters.
> Potassium ions need more space, pressing harder against neighbouring atoms and building up more tension that needs to be overcome for the microscopic cracks to get bigger.
So Siegfried Schelinski, Dieter Patzig, Klaus Heinrich and Bernd Grueger did the main work inventink the "unbreakable" drinking glass. Just for the record.
Interesting how the article laments, that they did not name the designers, but then happily ignore the names of the actual inventors of the material:
"The groundbreaking technology they deployed was developed in the 1970s at the Department for Glass Structure Research at the Central Institute for Inorganic Chemistry near Dresden. The material scientists there knew that when glass breaks, it is typically due to microscopic cracks in the material’s surface which form during the production process. Dramatically increasing the toughness of the glass surface was possible, they found, by replacing the smaller sodium ions in the glass with electronically charged potassium ions. Potassium ions need more space, pressing harder against neighbouring atoms and building up more tension that needs to be overcome for the microscopic cracks to get bigger"
I believe the technology in itself, is a bit more admirable and rather the people involved mentioning, than those who were using it to shape a glass.