Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
A. A. Lebedev developed a crystallite model for glasses in the 1920's which was supported by the 1930 publication of Randall, Rooksby, and Cooper But, the 1932 publication by Zachariasen entitled “The Atomic Arrangement in Glass” introduced the Warren and Zachariasen continuous random network (CRN) model. In that model, as applied to oxide glasses, oxygen polyhedra surrounding cations (e.g. SiO4 tetrahedra in silicate glasses) are linked together in a random manner to form extensive three-dimensional networks which do not exhibit long-range symmetry or periodicity. Zachariasen did assume that the forces between atoms in glasses and crystals are essentially the same, and noted the same polyhedra in both, but did not discuss any further possible correspondence between glasses and crystals.