Making and decorating a piece of glass took a lot of talent, training, and teamwork. In the 1820's, Americans developed a pressing machine that needed only two people with little experience to make it work. One person brought the hot glass from the furnace to the mold. The second cut off the right amount of glass to drop into the patterned mold which was made either of iron or brass. He then pulled the plunger down to squeeze this hot, soft glass into the mold. A decorated piece came out of the press in a few seconds.

There are three sources that concern the story of the “flexible” glass of first century Rome: Pliny’s Natural History, Petronius’ Satyricon, and Dio Cassius’ Roman History. Petronius (d. 63 A.D.) published the story before Pliny, who completed his encyclopedia in 78 A.D. Dio Cassius’ story

Since ancient times, perfume bottles have served to contain the most subtle of mysteries: delightful, seductive scents. Before glassblowing, ancient Egyptian artisans fashioned exquisite containers from alabaster, metals, precious stones, and core-formed glass to hold their highly valued

Performers throughout the 1700's produced sounds by gently rubbing the rims of finely tuned wineglasses with their moistened fingertips. Wineglasses were tuned by adjusting the amount of water in their bowls.

Pictured below are the basic tools used by glassblowers working "at the furnace" (as opposed to those working "at the lamp"- "flameworking" or "lampworking"). They are pretty much unchanged since the first century AD. Incredibly, a Roman-period worker

The story of the Blaschkas begins in the small town of Böhmisch Aicha (now Cˇesky´ Dub in the Czech Republic), where Leopold’s father continued the family tradition of flameworking. When Leopold was a student, his favorite  subjects were natural history and painting, and a visiting artist urged him to pursue a career in art. However, after serving an apprenticeship as a goldsmith and gem cutter in nearby Turnau (now Turnov), Leopold entered the family business of making costume jewelry and other fancy goods out of metal and flameworked glass.

Hedwig beakers form a small but famous group of vessels. They share several characteristics: the same form (they are beakers with a straight, tapering side), the same finishing techniques (they were decorated by cutting), and the same shallow faceting of the upper wall in order to display

The mighty glowing columns that stand like pillars in a ghostly cathedral...     -Anonymous At the beginning of the 20th century, there was no way to mass-produce flat glass. Although glass cylinders could be drawn by machine, they had to be opened and flattened by hand. What was needed was a way to form sheets of glass directly and continuously. In 1901, Belgian glassmaker Emile Fourcault invented a machine that drew a glass sheet five stories straight up from a vat of molten glass.

Glass breaks. But if it’s strengthened by thermal tempering, it breaks less easily and more safely. By 1920, architects and European car designers wanted more and more tempered glass—and in large sheets. Glassmakers could successfully temper only one sheet in ten.

I contrived heretofore, a perspective by Reflexion.       —Sir Isaac Newton, c. 1668 The refracting telescope gave astronomers their first real glimpse of the heavens. Then, it began to frustrate them. At higher magnifications, the instrument’s glass lenses produced distorted images. Pioneering British scientist Isaac Newton solved the problem by using a %%metal%% mirror to %%gather%% light. He built his reflecting telescope in 1668. The more astronomers saw, the more they wanted to see.