Elmira, New York

Everything Elmira is known for

5 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Elmira

Songs About Elmira

Mention My Name in Sheboygan
Everly Brothers
70%
"Mention my name in Elmira"
55%
"How odd life would be if you had made it from Elmira to Kansas City"
One Love
Nas
50%
"Wildin' on the Island, but now in Elmira"
Mention My Name in Sheboygan
The Everly Brothers
4%
"Mention my name in Elmira"
Drink Away the Pain (Situations)
Mobb Deep
2%
"Tommy Hil' was my nigga, and others couldn't figure"

History of Elmira

No, Glass Is Not a Liquid RoadyGoat

You've probably heard it: old cathedral windows are thicker at the bottom because glass is secretly a liquid that slowly flows over the centuries. It's a great story, and it is false. Glass is an amorphous solid. Its atoms are jumbled rather than neatly stacked like a crystal, but they are locked in place, not creeping downward. Models show that at room temperature, glass would take longer than the entire age of the universe to flow a visibly noticeable amount. So why are old panes uneven? Early hand-blown and crown glass simply came out lumpy and varied in thickness. When glaziers installed them, they tended to set the heavier, thicker edge at the bottom for stability, which is exactly what you'd do with a wobbly pane. The unevenness was baked in at the workshop, not the result of slow, mysterious flow.

13.1 mi away

The Glass Thread Behind the Whole Internet RoadyGoat

1970

In 1970, three Corning scientists, Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz, made the first low-loss optical fiber, a hair-thin glass thread clear enough to carry telephone calls as pulses of light. The number that mattered was about 17 decibels per kilometer, finally low enough to be practical. They built it from ultra-pure fused silica, then doped the core so its refractive index sat slightly higher than the surrounding cladding. That tiny difference traps the light by total internal reflection, bouncing it down the fiber instead of leaking out the sides. Every video, message, and web page you send today rides through fibers descended directly from this invention. It is the literal, physical backbone of the modern internet. Not metaphor, glass.

13.2 mi away

The Namesake Who Never Moved In RoadyGoat

1836

Corning got its name in 1836, honoring Erastus Corning, an Albany financier and railroad baron who poured money into the young settlement. The catch: he was an absentee namesake who never really lived here. Corning later led the 1853 merger that fused several lines into the New York Central Railroad, one of the giants of American rail. The town's real fame arrived in 1868, when Corning Glass Works moved in. A century of glass-science breakthroughs followed, earning the nickname Crystal City, and Corning Incorporated is still headquartered here today. One myth worth busting before you wander: the old window panes you'll see around town are not slowly flowing like liquid. Glass is an amorphous solid, and at room temperature it would take longer than the age of the universe to visibly sag. Lumpy panes were just made lumpy.

13.2 mi away

Watkins Glen State Park

1863

A two-mile gorge carved by Glen Creek through 400-million-year-old rock, with nineteen waterfalls and two hundred feet of canyon walls.

19.8 mi away

Everything Near Elmira

22 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Elmira on the Map