Scientific Glassblower on The One Show, Wednesday.

[Chris Hogg]

Anyone see it? Wonderfully skillful. I've always been impressed by glassblowers.

About 19 minutes in.

Interesting hair and boots, too.

[newshound]

Amazing, thanks for posting. Highly recommended.

[DerbyBorn]

Chris Hogg wrote in news: [e-mail]:

[soup]

Good to see an "Abby" in real life.

[Bob Eager]

If you're ever near Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Crystal place used to give a good tour and demo.

[Brian-Gaff]

Yes, there used to be a young lady on Brighton Pier who used to do blowing and also a kind of glass weaving or something like it. She was the daughter of the original bloke I gather. Does this sort of thing still happen down there? And yes, they used to have shall we say more lewd shapes under the counter,, catering for all needs. Brian

[Brian-Gaff]

I had a go at this once at school its certainly not easy, as to start with you need a very sustained and ard blow and to know just when to reheat and twist the tube etc. Not for me even when I could see. Brian

[Bob Eager]

I expect so. When I was a child I used to go on that pier frequently and see 'the Glass Animal Man" as he was known. There was also a shop in Queens Road at some point.

I even have one or two glass animals done by him - they have survived 50 years.

[Davey]

Yep, saw it. Look up 'Chihuli' sometime. A different type of glass-blowing, but very interesting. I saw an exhibition of his in Chicago a few years ago.

[Andy Burns]

As soon as I saw what she was capable of, I wondered if she made Klein bottles, I've never noticed her hair around town!

[David Lang]

Amazing. What was the thing she made for Stephen Fry called?

[Huge]

Agreed.

When I was at college, I did an introduction to glassblowing course in the chemistry lab's glassblowing shop, which looked very much like the one in the film. I still have the fermentation lock I made, here somewhere. Like many things done by an expert, it's a lot harder than she makes it look.

[whisky-dave]

I remember them removing the benches because they had asbestos tops in teh glass blowing area in Paddington college.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

[ARW]

Nice one.

Thank you.

[stuart noble]

What a terrific role model for young girls!

[whisky-dave]

That was a interesting looking multi-headed flame thrower thing she used to get the right shape flame.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Yes, very good.

When I was at UCL in the early '80s, there was a fantastic glass blower in the basement of the Physics building, and he did demos occasionally. He started off by making an old Edison-style light bulb, followed by a modern one (well, what we used to use in 1980;-) Then he went on to do a neon signage tube, and a cathode ray tube.

A key part of glass blowing in a physics department (as opposed to chemistry) is sealing electrodes through the glass, and mounting other metal or ceramic parts in the glass, which requires one or two different types of glass to be joined to cope with the differential expansion of the parts as they change temperature, combined with the need to maintain high vacuum in many experiments. Also using much higher melting point glasses to make specialist high pressure discharge tubes.

He was quite a showman too. Apparently he had recently repaired a couple of broken wine glasses for one of the professors - he said he wouldn't have minded if only the glasses had been of any quality in the first place!