The windshield or windscreen of an aircraft, car, bus, motorbike, truck, train, boat or streetcar is the front window, which provides visibility while protecting occupants from the elements. Modern windshields are generally made of laminated safety glass, a type of treated glass, which consists of, typically, two curved sheets of glass with a plastic layer laminated between them for safety, and bonded into the window frame.
Panoramic (wrap-around) windshield on a 1959 Edsel Corsair
Split and raked windshield on a 1952 DeSoto. Note the panes of glass are flat.
The laminated glass in Vice President Richard Nixon's vehicle was nearly breached by a hostile crowd in Caracas in 1958
Automobile windshield displaying "spiderweb" cracking typical of laminated safety glass
Tempered or toughened glass is a type of safety glass processed by controlled thermal or chemical treatments to increase its strength compared with normal glass. Tempering puts the outer surfaces into compression and the interior into tension. Such stresses cause the glass, when broken, to shatter into small granular chunks instead of splintering into jagged shards as ordinary annealed glass does. The granular chunks are less likely to cause injury.
A vandalised telephone booth made with tempered glass
Tempered glass of car rear window. Variations in glass stress are clearly seen when the glass is photographed through a polarizing filter (bottom picture).
Safety approval markings on an automobile vent window made for a Chrysler car by PPG.
Police van with screen protector