Sir Richard Atwood Glass (1820 – 22 December 1873) was an English telegraph cable manufacturer and a Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1868 to 1869.

Glass was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, in Southern England, the son of Francis Glass. He was educated at King's College London.^[1] In 1846 with George Elliot, he provided capital for an insolvent wire-rope manufacturers Heimann & Kuper, and by 1851 the firm was trading as Glass, Elliott & Company. The company produced submarine communications cables and in 1854 ran a circuit from Denmark to Sweden and undertook the manufacture of long cables for the French Mediterranean Telegraph Company of J W Brett. The cables with a resin-insulated conducting wire protected by an armour of iron wire proved to be long-lasting, and in the later 1850s the company introduced anti-corrosive compounds to coat the finished cable. The firm merged with the Gutta-Percha Company in 1864, and Glass became managing director of the resulting Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company.^[2] Glass's company provided half of the first transatlantic telegraph cable and all the cable laid by the Great Eastern in 1866. Glass was knighted for these services on 26 November 1867.^[1][3]

In the 1868 general election Glass was elected Member of Parliament for Bewdley. He was unseated on 16 February 1869 when the election was declared void.^[4]

Glass lived at Ashurst in Dorking, Surrey. He died on 22 December 1873, aged 53, of chronic Bright's disease at his home at South Stoneham, Hampshire.^[5]