Our well-known glass-ceramics textbooks by McMillan,¹ Hlaváč,² and Höland & Beall³ highlight the history of a key discovery: In 1739, French chemist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur became the first known person to produce partially crystallized glass (the so-called Réaumur porcelain).

Réaumur achieved this feat by heat treating soda-lime-silica glass bottles in a bed of gypsum and sand for several days. While successful in converting the glass into a polycrystalline porcelain-like material, his method resulted in a product prone to sagging, deformation, and low strength due to uncontrolled surface crystallization.