Window

The Romans were the first known to use glass for windows, a technology likely first produced in Roman Egypt, in Alexandria AD. Presentations of windows can be seen in ancient Egyptian wall art and sculptures from Assyria. Paper windows were economical and widely used in ancient China, Korea, and Japan. In England, glass became common in the windows of ordinary homes only in the early 17th century whereas windows made up of panes of flattened animal horn were used as early as the 14th century. In the 19th century American west, greased paper windows came to be used by pioneering settlers. Modern-style floor-to-ceiling windows became possible only after the industrial plate glass making…

The introduction of lancet windows into Western European church architecture from the 12th century CE built on a tradition of arched windows inserted between columns, and led not only to tracery and elaborate stained-glass windows but also to a long-standing motif of pointed or rounded window-shapes in ecclesiastical buildings, still seen in many churches today. Peter Smith discusses overall trends in early-modern rural Welsh window architecture: <blockquote> Up to about 1680 windows tended to be horizontal in proportion, a shape suitable for lighting the low-ceilinged rooms that had resulted from the insertion of the upper floor into the hall-house. After that date vertically proportioned…

Thermal or Diocletian windows are large semicircular windows (or niches) which are usually divided into three lights (window compartments) by two mullions. The central compartment is often wider than the two side lights on either side of it.