June 27, 2008

June 27, 2008

From Campbell, NY it is only fifteen minutes to Corning, NY. Corning is the home of its namesake glass company and the famous Corning Glass Museum. The museum starts out with modern glass artwork and then heads deep into the history of glass. Glass is one of the oldest of crafts first practiced around 1500 BC. For most of history glass making was a labor-intensive art making it reserved mostly for the wealthy. The history exhibits are amazingly extensive and moving too slow even for me, so I know Aimee is bored. I am thinking it was a mistake to have driven out of our way for this place. Fortunately Aimee is moving faster thru the museum and comes back to report there are some demonstrations going on up ahead. We take a break from glass history and watch several live demonstrations on glass making, blowing and breaking. All quite fascinating. Also past the history section are exhibits on glass chemistry, and newer technologies like fiber optics, lenses, Pyrex, and safety glass. Much more interesting for me. There are also exhibits on how manufacturing evolved from hand made to mass-produced. Glass is now such a useful and ubiquitous product but it wasn’t until the last fifty years that glass production (especially flat window glass) was automated.

From Corning we drive a half hour north to Watkins Glen State Park and get the last campsite with electricity.