Flexible glass is an alleged lost invention from the time of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.
The inventor repaired the bowl very easily with a small hammer, which he pulled from a pocket in his toga, according to Petronius.
It has been suggested this was either to protect the existing glassmaking industry,[2] to ensure that glass remained breakable as an effective planned obsolescence or because he feared that the glass would devalue gold and silver, since the material might be more valuable.
[4] Later during the Early Middle Ages, the story was retold by Isidore of Seville (c. 560 AD – c. 636 AD) in Etymologiae (XVI.16.6), De vitro, which in turn is included in pseudo-Heraclius's 13th-century collection of technical recipes.
[5] Although these stories are, without justification, often imagined to be either false or exaggerated, the historian Robert Jacobus Forbes believed that flexile referred to "bent" glass, such as handles used in stoneware.