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by scq 6 hours ago
Superfest was a brand of ion-exchange toughened drinking glasses. Ion-exchange toughened glass was invented by Steven Kistler in the 1960s, and commercialised by Corning shortly after.

Gorilla Glass is essentially the same thing, and it (or similar products from other manufacturers) is on nearly every smartphone and tablet sold today, so in some sense it's more widespread than it has ever been.

Another reason it might not have caught on for drinking glasses is (aside from being much more expensive to produce), when it breaks it shatters into a huge number of _sharp_ shards, whereas tempered glass shatters into mostly blunter cubes. You can get tempered glass drinking glasses at IKEA.

See also: https://history.stackexchange.com/a/79308

1 comments

I’d pay more for drinking glasses that break far less often. The sharp shards are ok - have to clean up anyway.
Me too. I may have come to the end of using Bodum's wonderful double-wall mugs because I now drop them more than I used to and they're getting ever more expensive.

https://www.bodum.com/us/en/10606-10us-bistro