In 1990, Tang Jianzheng, who had taught in the Department of Physics at Peking University for more than 30 years, came to the University of Sydney, Australia, as a visiting scholar, and began to work with R. E. Professor Collins jointly researched flat vacuum glass. After three years of hard work, in 1993, the world's first 1 meter × 1 meter flat vacuum glass sample was produced. But although the inventors are Tang Jianzheng and R. E. Collins, the patent rights belong to the University of Sydney. In 1996, the University of Sydney transferred the patent to Nippon Glass Glass Company, and the Japanese began mass production of vacuum glass the following year.