Most of the improvements to passive heating systems were made by the ancient Romans, who in the first century. n.e. they first used glass as partitions in window openings. In addition to flat glass, they also used round glass - convex, bonded with soft metals, as well as flat pieces of transparent rocks, such as mica and selenite. Then glass began to be used in the large window openings on the south side, eastern and western, to reach the right temperature and lighting at the required time of day. Vitruvius writes about the proper orientation of living quarters with the sides of the world. In his villa in Laurentum, Pliny the Younger, according to the indications of Vitruvius, he planned the windows in the dining room to the south-west, and in the bedroom to the south east. Pliny also writes about a room, which he calls "heliocaminus", which had a concentric shape and three huge windows on the south-east side, south and south-west. This room was a kind of "solar furnace", from where warm air was distributed through hypocaust ducts to heat adjacent rooms. Such solutions were also used in newer Roman baths (Trajan, Caracalla or Diocletian as a caldarium. The Romans were also the first to use glass to build greenhouses and conservatories.
The great idea of glass houses collapsed with the fall of the Roman Empire and the technique of manufacturing flat glass.
To the idea of building a greenhouse, first as small garden rooms, revived only during the Renaissance in the Netherlands.
The development of the greenhouse in modern times: a) 16th century greenhouse from the Netherlands, additionally heated by ceramic stoves, b) 18th-century Dutch greenhouse with flat glass and mats lowered at night, c) 19th-century palm house by the clubhouse in England, d) large glazing and a greenhouse on the roof in one of the houses in London from the late 19th century.
At the end of the 17th century. Flat glass production started again in France, similar to that used in ancient Rome. The production of flat glass panes influenced the rapid development of greenhouses mainly in England, France and the Netherlands. W XIX w. greenhouses were getting bigger and more ornate. Palm houses (greenhouses) they became an inseparable architectural element in wealthy palaces, or the seats of wealthy bourgeois families. In 19th-century English house-building manuals,. „The Gentleman’s House”, „The Glass House”, greenhouses - as additions to the living room or library - were even recommended. These ideas were forgotten after World War I.