1. A pure lustrous glass, now made from a composition of lead oxide, sand, and alkali; originally made with ground flint or pebble as the siliceous ingredient.
1683. Worlidge, in Houghton, Lett., II. 42. A Pipe made of Chrystal, or Flint-Glass.
1799. G. Smith, Laboratory, I. 171. Flint Glass, as it is usually called by us, is of the same general kind with that which in other places is called crystal glass.
1832. G. R. Porter, Porcelain & Gl., 138. The manufacture of flint glass was first begun in England in the year 1557, at Savoy House in the Strand, and in Crutched Friars.
1867. J. Hogg, Microsc., II. i. 19. A lens of crown-glass will have a longer focus than a similar one of flint-glass; since the latter has a greater refracting power than the former.
† 2. (with a and pl.) A vessel or other article made of this glass. Obs.
1675. Shane MSS., 857. 18 Sept., Permission to Ravenscroft to export flint glasses … to Ireland.
1708. Brit. Apollo, No. 57. 2/1. Two Gentlemen sitting in a Tavern, after some conversation being silent, plainly heard, and with great astonishment, a flint Glass Crack.
1766. Entick, London, IV. 280. Davis’s-yard, which is converted into a glass-house for making flint-glasses.
3. attrib.
1683. Worlidge, in Houghton, Lett., I. 166. Then with a Syphon or Crane (made of a Crystal or Flint glass Pipe) was this superfine liquor drawn off into quart or other bottles, and close stop’d for use.
1784. Watt, in Phil. Trans., LXXIV. 343. A flint-glass retort.
1831. Brewster, Optics, ix. 82. If the focal length of the convex crown-glass lens is made 41/3 inches, and that of the concave flint-glass lens 72/3 inches, they will form a lens with a focal length of 10 inches.
1871. trans. Schellen’s Spectr. Anal., xix. 67. The flint glass prism is replaced by one of bisulphide of carbon, which produces a spectrum of the same breadth but of almost double the length of the former one.
