The development of toughened glass dates back to the mid-17th century. One of the Rhine princes, Robert, who had done an interesting experiment, put a drop of molten glass in cold water and made a Very hard glass. This high-strength granular glass is like a drop of water with a long, curved tail called "Prince Robert". However, when the tail of the pellet is bent and broken, it is surprising that the whole pellet therefore suddenly and violently collapses, and even becomes a fine powder. This practice, much like metal quenching, which is quenching glass. This quenching does not make any change in the composition of the glass, so it is also called physical quenching (physical tempered), so tempered glass called tempered glass, also known as quenched glass.

The first patent for glass tempering was obtained by the French in 1874. The tempering method is to heat the glass to a temperature near the softening temperature and put it into a relatively low temperature liquid tank to increase the surface stress. This method is the early liquid steel method. Frederick Siemens of Germany obtained a patent in 1875 and Geovge E. Rogens of Massachusetts, USA applied the tempering method to glass and lamp posts in 1876. In the same year Hugh O'Hill won a patent in New Jersey.

In the 1930s, France's Saint Georges and the United States Trepcoix Company, as well as the United Kingdom Pilkington Company began to produce large-area flat tempered glass for the automotive windshield. In the 1930s, Japan also conducted industrialized production of toughened glass. From this world began large-scale production of tempered glass era.

After 1970, Triplex in the UK succeeded in using glass-reinforced liquid media with a thickness of 0.75 to 1.5 mm. This brought an end to the history of physical toughening and the failure to tempere thin glass, a major breakthrough in toughened glass technology.

The history of tempered glass in China was first started in 1955 with trial production of Shanghai Yaohua Glass Factory. In 1958, trial production of tempered glass factory in Qinhuangdao City was successful. 1965 Qinhuangdao Yaohua glass factory began to produce military glass, the 20th century, 70's Luoyang Glass Factory introduced the first Belgian steel equipment.  Over the same period Shenyang glass chemical glass into production.

As built in 1922, the main factory of Yaohua Glass Factory was removed in 2005 after more than 80 years

Since the 1970s, toughened glass technology has been widely promoted and popularized all over the world. Toughened glass has been used in the fields of automobile, construction, aviation and electronics, especially in construction and automobile industry.

China's first glass factory Qinhuangdao Yaohua glass machinery factory

Yaohua glass factory site is located in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province. Is the first large-scale glass manufacturer in China. Founded in 1922 by Qinhuangdao Yaohua Machinery and Glass Co., Ltd., a joint venture between China and Belgium, it was the sole Sino-foreign joint venture in northern China.

It opened the door to the development of China's glass industry, China's first mechanism of flat glass was born here. The establishment of Yaohua Glass Factory was closely related to a famous person in the early Republic of China. This man named Zhou Xuexi was an outstanding industrialist in the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China. He was praised by his descendants as the "industrial giant in northern China" and he and another Chinese Renowned businesswoman Zhang Xun famous, known as "South Zhang North Week."

Qinhuangdao Glass Museum

Yaohua glass factory in the first year of production capacity to break through the design, production of 160,000 TEUs glass, and good quality. Since then, Yaohua become the leading enterprise in China glass industry, Qinhuangdao is known as "China Glass City." As of today, as one of the famous enterprises in Qinhuangdao, Yaohua Glass Group Company also has considerable influence across the country.

Yaohua Glass Factory relocated in 2001, to record the history of Yaohua Glass, Qinhuangdao municipal government decided to retain part of Yaohua old factory building a thematic history museum - Qinhuangdao Museum of Glass. Museum project officially launched by the end of 2006, covers an area of 11.25 mu, with a total construction area of 2822 square meters, of which retain the original lamp house, water tower, water pump room area of 1556 square meters, new building area of 1266 square meters. The exhibition is divided into four parts, namely, the ancient glass and development, the cradle of China's glass industry, the contemporary glass industry in China, and the splendid glass art. Glass Museum infrastructure project has been basically completed. In October 2008, the People's Government of Hebei Province announced that the former Yaohua Glass Factory was the fifth batch of provincial-level cultural relics protection units in Hebei Province.