Laminated Glass Has Been Keeping Drivers Safe For Over A Century

By Gilbert Smith

When you think of life-saving automotive technology, your mind probably goes to airbags, seatbelts, crumple zones, and collision-avoidance technology. Something we generally take for granted, though, is the shatterproof windshield. Many of us may have even driven a Kia Soul or a Ford F-150 with a crack in the glass for months, even years, never getting it replaced because, whatever, the glass is still shielding us from the wind, ain't it? Well, that's only possible because of this simple technology that dates back 123 years.

The fact that shatterproof windshields have been around for over a century might not be that surprising, but what you might not know is that the technology has been around since before windshields became standard equipment in the first place. The invention itself dates back to 1903, and shatterproof windshields became the industry standard well before World War II.

Windshields Weren't Common On Early Vehicles

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen is widely considered the first automobile. You can point to self-propelled vehicles predating the Motorwagen, but this is the first vehicle you could really point to and say, "Yeah, that's a car alright." The first test drive of this vehicle was in 1885. Believe it or not, the windshield took a while to come around after this. Early cars were pretty slow, after all, and occupants didn't have to worry about getting hit in the face with a bug at 60 mph when few cars could do a third of that speed.

As far as production cars go, the earliest known model with a windshield was likely the 1904 Oldsmobile Curved Dash, which offered windshields as optional equipment. Imagine paying extra to not have to chew mosquitoes all the way to work these days. The most surprising thing about this timeline is that the invention of laminated glass predates the introduction of windshields in production vehicles.

The Oldsmobile Curved Dash had a top speed of around 20 mph. Occupants weren't traveling at what we would call "highway speeds" in 2026, so a windshield might not have been deemed a necessity so much as a luxury. Additionally, the car was an open-air roadster, so the optional windshield would only have offered limited protection from the elements in the first place.

Laminated Glass Was A Happy Accident

As the story goes, we have French chemist Edouard Benedictus to thank for developing laminated glass. It wasn't his intention to invent anything in the lab that day in 1903, though. There was a lucky accident when he dropped a beaker coated with cellulose nitrate and noticed that it held its shape after breaking, keeping all the shards safely together.

A French corporation, Le Carbone, had a patent for celluloid-coated glass as early as 1902, a year before Benedictus' discovery, but it was Benedictus who would be credited with bringing the invention to the public.

Benedictus didn't immediately capitalize on this and start selling the formula to automakers. Instead, he laid the basic groundwork that was needed to produce safer windshields. He didn't patent his invention until 1909, after reading about an accident where two women were injured by shattered glass. From there, he founded the Société du Verre Triplex to produce glass-plastic composites and advocated for their use in automobiles.

It Took 18 Years To Produce The Windshield, And Another 11 To Laminate Them

Early windshields weren't a safety feature. In fact, in the event of an accident, these flat, single-plane screens were likely to create a whole other source of injury, exploding into a million razor-sharp pieces and cutting occupants to ribbons. The normalization of windshields and the proliferation of shatterproof windshields went hand in hand.

We have the First World War to thank for proving the efficacy of laminated glass. Benedictus's limited success in pushing the adoption of the material in automobiles was largely due to production costs. During WWI, an entire industry was mobilized to fast-track the development and implementation of ideas that could save soldiers. Laminated glass helped to make gas masks and airplane windshields safer.

The war created the right circumstances that later allowed automakers to make the panels at a mass-production level. According to Ford, after World War I, Henry Ford was riding around with a friend when they were both injured by a shattered windshield. The incident led Ford to use laminated glass in its automobiles.

Legislation Was Slow To Enforce Laminated Glass

The earliest national legislation on windshield glass would likely have been Britain's Road Traffic Act of 1930. As part of it, the British Parliament required all new cars to feature safety-glass windshields. The material didn't necessarily have to be laminated, but it meant that the days of flat, single-pane windshields were over.

In the US, shatterproof glass wasn't legally mandated until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Highway Safety Act. It created the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1970. Up to this point, many automakers had already been using tempered glass, which was safer than single-pane windshields but could still shatter in a crash. Only laminated glass kept the panel intact if it broke.

Sources: NHTSA, Global NCAP.

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This article originally appeared on CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.