Word: vitreous
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...great import--and he had a selfless urge to share his new knowledge. When Franklin caught the electricity bug in his 40s, "electrick fire" was a playful if puzzling entertainment. His experiments led him to startlingly modern conclusions. The "fire," he said, is a single "fluid," not the dual "vitreous" and "resinous" electricities postulated by European savants. It exists in two states: plus and minus (terms he coined, along with positive and negative, battery and conductor). Furthermore, he said, if there is an excess of charge in one conductor, it must be precisely balanced, as in double-entry bookkeeping...
Angel's approach relies less on intricate control systems and more on vitreous wizardry. The 10-ton mirror he and his colleagues plan to install in Arizona -- merely a warm-up for some 8-m versions -- boasts a light-collecting surface that is nearly as wide as a house is tall, yet it averages only 2.8 cm thick. What prevents this marvel from fracturing under its own weight is a supporting truss composed of thousands of glass ribs that are cast as part of the mirror's underlying structure. Arrayed in a striking hexagonal pattern, the ribs form an airy...
...cause for alarm is a recent congressional action awarding $5 million grants to a chemistry center at Columbia University and a vitreous center at catholic University after both schools had employed a Washington, D C law firm to do some unusual lobbying...
...with which he has pursued his essential lan guage as a painter - how the zigzagging pipes under the basin in Corner of Studio - Sink, 1963, relate to the angular chops of dark shadow in his earlier Berkeley landscapes, and are exquisitely refined in the later Ocean Parks; how the vitreous transparencies of his Californian rooms in the late '50s, gridded by mul lions and tabletops, become the sharp glazed intercuts of Ocean Park...
...reports of a dire shortage of toilets. Hospitals, homes, schools and office buildings, habitable in all other respects, still stand idle because their bathrooms have not been completed. One of the reasons for the shortage is a recent ten-week strike that shut down the major manufacturers of vitreous china, the substance used in the construction of toilets. But another problem is the soaring demand for bathrooms. While there were 35 home toilets per 100 Americans in 1960, the number increased to 42 in 1970 and continues to rise. In the meantime, where are Americans to seek inspiration? Cathedrals, perhaps...