What is a window?  It’s an opening in a wall or a door, normally contains glass, and lets light into the room or building.  As an opening, it is often said that the human eye is a “window into the soul”.  And a book, or a treatise, can be said to “open a window” into history.  Sort of like this one:

People first began putting glass in the openings of their dwellings and other buildings in Roman times.  Glass wasn’t very pure back then, and often had inclusions and impurities, making it cloudy.  But it literally enlightened peoples’ lives.  Windows can also be openings in castle walls, for the defenders to shoot their arrows through.  Like this.

Sometimes, new windows are inserted into very old walls, like these.

Here is an early American window. At Fort Ticonderoga, in New York.

Windows can be sad, as in when they are broken, and the building abandoned.

This is Camden, New Jersey.

And windows can be joyous, as when they are the stained-glass windows of churches.  These windows take an enormous amount of labor in design and installation, and they give much joy.  There are stained-glass windows surviving today, that were installed in ancient times.

Modern buildings can have entire walls of windows.  Human ingenuity creates them all.

Happy Window Wednesday!