The scientific instruments prepared by the glass-blower are numerous and highly useful: barometers, thermometers, syphons, and many other vessels constructed of tubes, are indispensable to the student of physics or chemistry. Some of these instruments are high in price, and liable to frequent destruction; and those by whom they are much employed are subject to considerable expense in procuring or replacing them. It is therefore advisable that he who desires to occupy himself in the pursuit of experimental science, should know how to prepare such instruments himself; that, in short, he should become his own glass-blower. “The attainment of a ready practice in the blowing and bending of glass,” says Mr. Faraday, “is one of those experimental acquirements which render the chemist most independent of large towns and of instrument-makers.”

Unquestionably the best method of learning to work glass is to obtain personal instructions from one who is conversant with the art: but such instructions are not easily obtained. The best operators are not always the best teachers; and to find a person equally qualified and willing to teach the art, is a matter of considerable difficulty. In large towns, workmen are too much engaged with their ordinary business to step aside for such a purpose; and in small towns glass-blowers are seldom to be found. In most cases, also, they are too jealous of their supposed secrets to be willing to communicate their methods of operating to strangers, even when paid to do so.

The following Treatise is a free translation of L’Art du Souffleur À la Lampe, par T. P. Danger. The author is employed, in Paris, in preparing glass instruments for sale, and in teaching others the art of preparing them. He has presented in this work the most minute instructions for the working of glass which have ever been offered to the public. The general processes of the art are so fully explained, and the experimental illustrations are so numerous, that nothing remains except the reducing of these instructions to practice to enable the student to become an adept in the blowing of glass. I trust that, in publishing this work in an English dress, I may be considered as aiding in some degree the progress of physical science.

This work contains a description of a cheap blowpipe and a very convenient lamp; both of them the invention of the author: but any other kind of lamp or blowpipe may be employed instead of these. The reader who wishes for a description of the blowpipes generally employed in England, may consult Mr. Griffin’s Practical Treatise on the Use of the Blowpipe in Chemical and Mineral Analysis.

London, September 1831.