Document 7oDpXD1ZwoZaNB8n6rK8Rd96

e- ios 34, Dover Street. Dondon, ~K 1. 1st April, 1938. The Secretary, Messrs. Rockbestos Securities Co. 100, Broadway, New York, TJ, S. A. Dear Sir, I am sending ycru herewith a copy of the R3ADBF.S DIG2ST, April-1938, and would draw your particular attention, and also that of your Directors, to the article on Page 106, entitled "leaving the Sands of the Sea". It would appear that it will be necessary for you to consider how this might affect our business, and I should be glad to know if you are experiencing any competition from this direction. I am , Yours faithfully, RBB 01014 7-SY, A . .. ....~ SC-ELEC-00720 RBB 00869 , * .V' -..L--.T*- ^ y&hr# 181? Jr^ . ^ 4.3 i* -.i /\t. $ V.- "&r. . C^v" {$:*&{& *jVs .^5ht.v .SjPv :^:s ^ Glass fabric* that art soft as cocon, sheer as silk or tough as cnav^j Weaving the Sands of the Sea Condensed from Nation's Business Edward Brtcber and Philip Dunaway " nu things may be woven," small giass marbles, exactly like /\ wrote Dante, "even the those you piayed with as a boy. -L. ua. sands of the sea." Today glass-makers are weaving tons of sand -- sand made into almost in visible threads of glass from which are spun lustrous yarns for fire-re sistant textiles and electrical insu lation. They are producing fabrics soft as cotton, sheer as silk, tough as canvas. This new fibrous giass These are fed, one at a time, into a trim electric furnace no bigger than a kitchen stove. High-pressure steam blowers force the molten glass through 102 tiny holes in a plate that forms part of the furnace door, producing fbot-iong, cottonlike glass fibers which are gathered by mechanical fingers and twisted into yarn. Wound on may be cut, sewn, woven or knitted spindles, the yarn is processed into -- it is industry's newest basic ma terial. As early as 1892 an American glass company tailored a dress of silk fabric interwoven with strands of giass thread, and exhibited it at the Columbian Exposition. Since then giass-dress stories have popped up from Paris, Hollywood, and points between. But today glass fiber has become a staple of commerce. Even a 14th-century Venetian cloth by regular textile machinery. The same kind of furnace also produces continuous fibers, with a io,ocx>mile unbroken strand no nov elty. It is hard to believe that each cuarter-cunce marble will yield nearly a miie of thread of ico filaments. To do this no blowers are needed; the attendant simply grasps the filaments as they worm their way through the perforated plate, fas tens them to a revolving drum which could produce glass fiber, but he couldn't draw it one-twentieth as fine as a human hair, nor could he manufacture enough of it daily, as Corning Glass Works does, to reach the sun, and enough more, as docs Owens-Illinois, to reach back. The modern process begins with pulls them out -- drawing some 60 miles of fiber a minute- A single twist makes a soft scrand; half a dozen a strong, tough thread. Though glass fabric won't take a dye, tinted glass marbles may be used in the furnace to produce yarns of difrerent colors. i The Chamber if Commerce of the United $Intel, /6/j H o.c, .V. tV., /P4jbirt*tent D. C. ic6 i.Valfon't 3`Mine3St March, ljS) eJVi' *- -"7 . RBB 00975 V . t&f r?\ - Wl'. fr - y * .*_" '>3^5 y-5fi *SKl r: ; EV.,\f WEAVING THE SANDS OF THE SEA With the textile field at present curtains and awnings. You'll see highly competitive, glass fibers thus them first on ships and in theaters, far are mostly used for two special where fire means catastrophe; later, purposes -- as chemical filters and in public dining rooms where there as electrical insulation. As the former, will be no more cigarette holes :n glass resists most acids and with table `'linen." Architects envision stands temperatures even four times thin, almost filmy nets of close- as high as can ordinary cloth. Also, woven giass applied over colorful glass cloth filters last weeks instead wallpaper, reflecting light into dark ofdays, and are used in places where est corners and permitting color no filter has ever served before. from the paper underneath to shine Even more startling is glass fiber's through in pastel patterns. success in electrical insulation. It Unprocessed glass fiber--produced not only insulates but is fire-resist in huge furnaces -- is being used in ant, vermin-proof and highly flexi carload lots as "glass wool " for in ble. There is no reason why all sulating buildings, railroad cars, auto electrical wires should not be wrapped mobiles, refrigerators and all types in glass. Then, too, glass can be of furnaces. Germany is using it ex used in layers so thin that a five-^ tensively as heat insulation in her horsepower electric motor, glass in new process of extracting gasoline sulated, takes up no more space from coal on a large scale. Previ than present morors of half that ously she had imported asbestos for power. Indeed, glass may become this purpose. But shortly, using as universal an insulator as copper American machinery in her glass- is a conductor. wool factories, she will be freed of Glass men are not ready to push the need of importing asbestos and the idea of glass clothing, but they possibly certain other raw materials. do see possibilities of dining off glass Even the poorest of have-not na tablecloths and living among glass tions has sand. f?Lace-^Hames oojf(\~B,uharacier -II- Sugar, Idaho Hominy, Oklahoma Toast, North Carolina Tomato, .Arkansas Cucumber, West Virginia Tea, South Dakota Cones, California Cocoa, Florida Pie, West Virginia Gallanc, Alabama Sprv, Utah Alert, Indiana Erect, North Carolina Gay, Michigan Chic, Tennessee Beauty, Kentucky Handsom, Virginia Slick, Oklahoma Vi. c P. tils aIw;' -*1' RBB 00976