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"I'm a fairly visual thinker. In doing science, I think in terms of pictures of things happening, and then do the mathematics."
- Gregory Benford

Glassite  
  A transparent material of great strength.  

And there were humans here now. On this tumbled plain, between Archimedes and the mountains, one small crater amid the million of its fellows was distinguished this night by the presence of humans. The Grantline camp!

...The third building seemed a lean-to banked against the cliff wall, a slanting shed-wall of glassite fifty feet high and two hundred in length. Under it, for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff. Braced tunels were hewn penetrating back and downward into the vein of rock.

Technovelgy from Brigands of the Moon, by Ray Cummings.
Published by Astounding Stories of Super Science in 1930
Additional resources -

The same word appears in Edmond Hamilton's Sargasso of Space, which was published at just about the same time:

THEY climbed back, up to the ship's top, and leapt off it toward a Jupiter freighter lying a little farther inside the pack. As they floated toward it, Kent saw their men moving on with them from ship to ship, progressing inward into the pack. Both Kent and Liggett kept Krell always ahead of them, knowing that a blow from his bar, shattering their glassite helmets, meant instant death. But Krell seemed quite intent on the search for fuel.

Here's another usage from Phantom of the Seven Stars (1940) by Ray Cummings; this one is on a space ship:

We were sitting under the glassite pressure-dome on the forepeak of the Seven Stars, bathed in the pallid starlight.

Compare to artificial transparent element from Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon, neo-crystal from Master of the Asteroid (1932) by Clark Ashton Smith, transparent car roof from Sinister Barrier (1939) by Eric Frank Russell, plani glass from Crystalized Thought (1937) by Nat Schachner, thermalite from Planet of Eternal Night (1939) by John W. Campbell and slow glass from Light of Other Days (1968) by Bob Shaw.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Brigands of the Moon
  More Ideas and Technology by Ray Cummings
  Tech news articles related to Brigands of the Moon
  Tech news articles related to works by Ray Cummings

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