Historically, the calculation of glass properties is directly related to the founding of glass science. At the end of the 19th century the physicist Ernst Abbe developed equations that allow calculating the design of optimized optical microscopes in Jena, Germany, stimulated by co-operation with the optical workshop of Carl Zeiss. Before Ernst Abbe's time the building of microscopes was mainly a work of art and experienced craftsmanship, resulting in very expensive optical microscopes with variable quality. Now Ernst Abbe knew exactly how to construct an excellent microscope, but unfortunately, the required lenses and prisms with specific ratios of refractive index and dispersion did not exist. Ernst Abbe was not able to find answers to his needs from glass artists and engineers; glass making was not based on science at this time.
In 1879 the young glass engineer Otto Schott sent Abbe glass samples with a special composition (lithium silicate glass) that he had prepared himself and that he hoped to show special optical properties. Following measurements by Ernst Abbe, Schott's glass samples did not have the desired properties, and they were also not as homogeneous as desired. Nevertheless, Ernst Abbe invited Otto Schott to work on the problem further and to evaluate all possible glass components systematically. Finally, Schott succeeded in producing homogeneous glass samples, and he invented borosilicate glass with the optical properties Abbe needed. These inventions gave rise to the well-known companies Zeiss and Schott Glass (see also Timeline of microscope technology). Systematic glass research was born. In 1908, Eugene Sullivan founded glass research also in the United States (Corning, New York).
At the beginning of glass research it was most important to know the relation between the glass composition and its properties. For this purpose Otto Schott introduced the additivity principle in several publications for calculation of glass properties. This principle implies that the relation between the glass composition and a specific property is linear to all glass component concentrations, assuming an ideal mixture, with C and b representing specific glass component concentrations and related coefficients respectively in the equation below. The additivity principle is a simplification and only valid within narrow composition ranges as seen in the displayed diagrams for the refractive index and the viscosity. Nevertheless, the application of the additivity principle lead the way to many of Schotts inventions, including optical glasses, glasses with low thermal expansion for cooking and laboratory ware (Duran), and glasses with reduced freezing point depression for mercury thermometers. Subsequently, English and Gehlhoff et al. published similar additive glass property calculation models. Schotts additivity principle is still widely in use today in glass research and technology.
:Additivity Principle: