Fiberglass is a type of fiber primarily composed of glass that is used in a wide variety of applications, and is predominantly used as a residential and commercial thermal insulator. As an insulator, it maintains a resistance to the spread of heat (known as the R-Value), cold and sound in structures, vehicles, aircraft, etc. By trapping pockets of air, it keeps areas warm in the winter and cools in the summer and thereby serves as a excellent way to increase energy conservation all the while maintaining comfort.

 

Glass has been woven into small amounts of coarse fibers for many centuries, even by the ancient Egyptians, but fiberglass did not exist in its modern (insulation) form until 1932 as a result of an accident. An Owens-Illinois researcher named Dale Kleist was attempting to create a vacuum-tight seal between two glass blocks when a jet of high-pressure air turned a stream of molten glass into fine fibers. He had unintentionally discovered an effective method to produce large amounts of fiberglass particles, a method that he would refine in later years. In the United States, the first commercial production of fiberglass was started by Illinois Glass Company and the Corning glass work in 1939.

 

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