
Caltech glassblower's retirement has scientists sighing (2016) - Tomte
http://beta.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-caltech-glassblower-20160613-snap-story.html
======
kevin_b_er
As was commented when this last came up, CalTech had years to find or train a
replacement. They were unwilling to spend the money to maintain their human
capital. Neither were the nearby universities. They suffer as a result of
their hubris. Many companies do too when they don't realize their human assets
are actually part of a bus factor of 1 and let them quit or fire them, then
wonder why they lost critical tribal knowledge. I'm sure CalTech has hired
plenty of non-technical administrative staff and dedicated multiples of the
glass blower's salary in the meantime.

~~~
andrewla
I graduated from Caltech in 99, and I worked in Emlyn Hughes's physics lab,
doing some programming for his experiments with Rubidium spin coupling with
He3. The apparatus for the experiment was custom made by Gerhart, and even
then, 20 years ago now, the faculty was trying to find and train a
replacement. Their standards were very high, to be sure, but the main problem
wasn't so much compensation, but finding a skilled apprentice who was willing
to put in years with no guarantees that they would be the successor, or even
become master glassblowers in their own right, and master scientfic
glassblowers who have gone through their apprenticeship are rare beasts
indeed.

We see this scarcity in other industries that require traditional
master/journeyman/apprentice systems, like master machinists, masons, or
plasterers. That there is are no baseline jobs, like light bulb manufacturing
in glassblowing, that allow a sufficient pool of talent to acrue so that the
very best, the "10x" artisans, can be found. That pool also gives a fallback
so that people who are trained but do not possess the talent or dedication to
become masters can still be gainfully employed.

~~~
elgenie
On the other hand, there seems to be no shortage of those willing to
apprentice, with no guarantees, as "minor league baseball player" without a
realistic fallback if they happen to not quite make it into the 750-1000 best
baseball players in the world. The compensation at the end in the unlikely
case of success sure seems to make a difference there.

~~~
daveguy
Unfortunately I don't think the compensation at the end for a master
glassblower is $42,000 per month, minimum.

~~~
endymi0n
While the 99th percentile is certainly more attractive, the mean and probably
even the average are much lower.

It's funny how people are willing to bet against the lottery on their whole
career.

Then again...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority)

~~~
theshadowknows
I sit in a very visible and mission critical seat at my company and I support
basically all departments with a technical component, from CRM and marketing
to IT and operations. And my compensation is less than half what other
organizations pay for similar positions. Hence why I’m shopping around very
heavily. It’s not even really about the money for me. My family and I are
comfortable. But if the org isn’t willing to invest in its people then to me
that is a bad sign.

------
code_duck
I have been in a closely related field for about 20 years, borosilicate flame
working of glass for artistic purposes. There is a huge amount of interest in
this type of glassblowing right now, but it is centered around artistic
cannabis accessories.

There will be no problem finding people with glass skill and a desire to do
flameworked glass. It is the other skills mentioned in the article, such as
familiarity with chemistry, higher math and lab work, plus the desire to have
a 9-to-5 job with an institution that is difficult to come by. Many people who
choose to become artistic glassblowers do not have any sort of higher
technical education, or would not mesh well with a university job in some
other way, such as, being enthusiastic about tattoos and vaping cannabis
extracts all day.

Besides that, many glassblowers can imagine the benefits of a regular job that
involves glassblowing, especially as they get older and the healthcare
benefits grow more useful. The volatility of the artistic/functional glass
market plays a role, too. Currently it's experiencing a downturn, despite the
cannabis market booming, and many people are seeking other incomes. It would
be interesting to hear whether Salem has seen an increase in applications or
inquiries.

What I didn't see an article is a mention of one reason this is happening.
Mass production, primarily in China, and outsourcing, primarily to India, has
removed the need to have an in-house glassblower and made it not a good choice
financially, because a lot of the items they used to make can now be replaced
more cheaply then they can be produced by hand.

I have a cousin who worked for a petroleum company for over 40 years as a
scientific glassblower. He recently scaled down his business from hundreds of
items and now only makes one especially profitable item.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
From the article, it sounds like this guy was creating custom glassware. Can
you just call up a manufacturer in China or India and get them to create a
handful of specialised glassware?

~~~
code_duck
That's exactly the problem they're facing. Since the market for low end work
has been removed, new glassblowers are not able to build careers, businesses,
experience, or skills needed to start doing advanced work, and positions have
been eliminated. Without entry-level work, you don't get a new generation of
medium and advanced workers.

Repair of specialized equipment is a big deal, too. In many cases it takes as
much skill as fabricating an apparatus in the first place.

Like the article says, it helps a lot if the glassblower understands the
scientific process and works closely with the researcher. I think researchers
work around this by finding ways to use or combine standard equipment. A
scientist doing truly novel work, though, will benefit from or require
customized glassware.

My belief is that this will be solved by 3-D printing or automation in some
way.

~~~
HarryHirsch
3D printing? Have you even seen a glassblower? If you are in the NE US the
Corning Museum in Elmira is recommended. Otherwise one can just look at the
Chemglass or Ace Glass catalog and consider that _everything in there_ was
made from glass tubing with the aid of nothing more than a torch and a lathe.
No pressed glass, no forms are involved.

~~~
code_duck
I have 20 years of professional experience fabricating borosilicate with a
torch in the exact fashion of scientific glass, and I have taken several
classes at Corning and am familiar with the museum. I am quite familiar with
precisely how all of that apparatus is constructed.

The most recent 3-D printing with glass I have read about creates a piece of
fused silica, which is even harder to fabricate and more useful in lab work.
They print it from a silica infused polymer, and then each section is fused
with the laser, and the polymer burns away, leaving quartz. Seems quite
workable to me. This was covered in an article published recently.

edit: one article that gives a good overview:
[https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15114](https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15114)

a more consumery article: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/you-can-
now-3d-pri...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/you-can-now-3d-print-
glass-180962951/)

~~~
thereisnospork
Do you know if anyone has gotten that or a similar process to a commercialy
viable level? Truly 3d customizable glassware is something I'd definitely be
wanting to order at some point in the future.

~~~
namibj
If it's the necessary precision for requiring only minimal grinding to get
norm fittings and the glass part of vacuum tubes, that would indeed be great.

There are still things best done with tubes, and in some ways tubes are much
better than transistors if it comes to reliability, mostly related to the
sheer physical size preventing as-trivial cases of ESD/EMP fried LNAs in
radios. Or the HF switch selecting between antennas and RX/TX. But this is
probably a minor concern in practice.

~~~
code_duck
There are computer aided processes that can manufacture items such as that -
things that can be made an a lathe. Such machines are very expensive at this
point, however, such as the equipment made by Herbert Arnold of Germany which
runs well over 100k. I would love to see some lightweight, less specialized
automation in this niche, as what currently exists are heavy duty CNC class
machines. They are impractically expensive and overqualified for projects like
20g tubes of glass with one end closed and a ridge.

------
sitkack
The University of Washington made the same mistake pushing our glass blower
Bob Morley out for early retirement, partly out of spite to "reduce costs"
that didn't need reducing.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=HKLUF3PWOGYC&pg=PA66&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=HKLUF3PWOGYC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=bob+morley+uw+glass&source=bl&ots=OwPm3TGdxW&sig=MDqJkasE5UBxjIAOIA8jtcpIYbU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWoaivhL7bAhX9HDQIHXjUAMgQ6AEIVjAN#v=onepage&q=morley&f=false)

> Our glass blower, Bob Morley, has retired. He made essential contributions
> to many of the experiments over the years, and the Department will miss him
> and his skills.

[https://sharepoint.washington.edu/phys/newsletter/Documents/...](https://sharepoint.washington.edu/phys/newsletter/Documents/Vol13winter04.pdf)

Pushed out. And with him a lifetime of hard won skills. They asked for him
back after they learned their mistake but he had moved on.

~~~
StudentStuff
Sounds like standard UW behavior, they sure do know how to make poor
decisions! Their satellite campuses don't do much better in making rational
decisions afaik.

------
pasbesoin
Some decades ago, my first year college chemistry course included a lab that
exercised a simple example of this. Make your own, much finer dropper, and
then properly calibrate it.

I mention this, because the calibration was an essential aspect. Each result,
of itself, was to some degree a one-off. You weren't getting production
replication to set high degree of precision; there was variability. You then
measured/calibrated how your individual unit performed.

I've seen that a lot, in subsequent life. There may be variability in whatever
device or process; if you learn what it is and understand it, you can then use
the device or process precisely in light of that knowledge.

But, a lot of people don't know how to do this.

Not just with glassware. With accounting. Tools. Programming. Scientific
formulae (simplest example of this: people who could never generalize, but
instead tried to memorize all the "plug-and-chug" instances for all the
specific test problems they would be presented). Etc.

So, aside from having the resulting glassware, I think making it -- and
calibrating it -- is a useful lesson, in itself.

------
rrock
I knew this guy when I was a graduate student there in the 90s. I never went
to him for anything elaborate, just some stuck ground glass joints or a box
full of round bottom flasks with star cracks in them. The star cracks are bad
news, they can implode when you pull vacuum on them. We all heard stories of
major injuries that way, so we were careful to get them repaired when we found
them.

Rick always had something amazing and elaborate under construction when I went
and saw him. Definitely not the things that you could find in a chem glassware
catalog.

Machinists are somewhat similar. But in academic settings there are many
students and postdocs who need to make their own hardware, and there needs to
be someone to train them and to manage the workshop.

~~~
Cthulhu_
You can repair cracked / starred (?) glassware and still use it in labs?

~~~
Gibbon1
Yes you can use a torch to fix cracks. The tricky part is knowing how to heat
the work without causing the cracks to start running. But you get it hot and
work the seam it'll disappear.

Probably easier with borosilicate than leaded glass.

------
PaulHoule
the uni doesn't reward people that aren't on the tenure track. In the long
term this limits what the Uni can do, but if there is one thing about the Uni
it is that it doesn't have enough self-regard to pursue it's own interests.

~~~
Thriptic
Pretty much this. Universities would greatly benefit from having more staff
scientists with deep xp, more core labs, more personnel such as these glass
blowers, and dedicated IT and development teams made available to researchers.

They never make it happen because most people at a given institution don't
really care about furthering the institution as a whole, and are instead
focused exclusively on their own lab or personal career.

~~~
chrisseaton
What is 'deep xp', and what do you mean by 'core labs'?

~~~
Thriptic
Most labs lack the experience or equipment to efficiently do all aspects of
their work, so departments will create "core facilities" which house
specialized equipment and personnel with relevant experience to facilitate
specific aspects of research. Examples from biology could be imaging work,
cultivating cells, working with animals, working with DNA etc. A machine shop,
these glass blowers, or a computational cluster would be examples from other
departments. These facilities are made available to researchers for a fee
(think cost center).

The reason these aren't more prevelant is that the universities typically
don't pay for them directly; they are frequently funded by a department and
stocked with equipment purchased by individual labs. In exchange for donating
equipment, the labs get priority access and have supplies and equipment
maintenance costs paid for by the department.

IN THEORY cores and other communal resources should be paid for by university
overhead (basically a fee assessed on each grant or funding source brought
in). In practice, overhead goes to pay for a bunch of bullshit that has
nothing to do with research.

~~~
Something1234
What kind of bullshit does the overhead fund? Is it more than just
administration and facilities?

~~~
Fomite
Overhead keeps the lights on.

It funds things like facilities, administrative support, and then is actually
used for things like core facilities or shared equipment expenditures (this is
often at the department or college level). It's also often where the source
for new faculty startup packages and the like comes from.

------
ISL
Laboratory glassblowers are spectacularly valuable. Unfortunately, the funding
for such work is insufficient to maintain a pipeline of trained glassblowers,
leading to the now-perpetual shortage of scientific glassblowers.

I don't know what will happen in another generation.

~~~
daodedickinson
How was this funded in the past?

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
If you pay for multiple glass blowers at a University, then you can have a
Master and an Apprentice. But you are paying for more blowing than you
strictly need.

If you pay for the exact amount of glass blowing you need, you will only have
1 glass blower per institution and there isn't room for apprenticeship.

Seems like an easy fix would be a "Glass Blowers of Southern California" shop,
where a few glass blowers could service USC, UCLA, and a couple other schools
at the same time.

That way you could still easily meet with the blower locally, but it wouldn't
be on campus.

Northern California wouldn't need a shop because Stanford, and Berkeley
already have a bevy of glass blowing experts.

~~~
ethbro
Or better yet, have apprentices at each institution, with a traveling master
whose cost is shared across institutions.

Apprentices take care of day-to-day work on their own, have oversight, and
universities don't have to afford their own master glassblower.

~~~
lev99
Why are several apprentices and one traveling master better than a centralized
group of glassblowers?

~~~
thefifthsetpin
One benefit would be the logistics of getting an apprentice's glass to an
institution that needs it.

------
Hasz
Having recently purchased some glasssware, there's no way I could have
afforded the American made stuff. Chinese glass is just insanely cheap.

I bought 1 1000mL RBF, 1 500mL RBF, a 300mm distillation tube, T, vaccum
takeoff adapter, thermometer well and a few other bits and bobs all in 24/40
for like $40 shipped from China.

It's not beautiful, but it works. You need guys like this for the crazy
complicated apparatus, or the one-offs, but for everything else, mass
production is the way to go.

~~~
zamfi
Sow,thing to keep in mind about top researchers at top schools: money is not
usually the constrained resource — time and people are harder to come by.

Paying for a custom rig that works and does exactly what they want is easily
worth the added expense, paid for by research grants. Waiting for mediocre
products,that only mostly solve your problem, to be shopped internationally
just isn’t worth the cost savings.

~~~
Hasz
As you might guess, a cheap boro distillation rig from china isn't going to be
doing cutting edge research. But, for most of the more mundane undergrad labs
and routine chemistry, that kind of stuff it perfect.

------
privong
Some comments from 2 years ago when this was previously posted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11983716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11983716)

~~~
severine
Can't check the other thread now, but just in case it wasn't there, here it is
now, for your glassblowing pleasure, the great piece by Bert Haanstra called
Glas (1958): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLS7--
ZLCoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLS7--ZLCoI)

------
TimMurnaghan
Too much from the latimes today. Which is a shame as they are particularly
crappy at GDPR. I know it's hard for US-ians to care, but if a large
proportion of the articles are inaccessible it will damage hacker news. Better
not to put these stories that want to stay local on the front page.

~~~
tomelders
Agreed. GDPR is a good thing. I feel like the LA Times is just being difficult
to make a point somehow.

------
todd8
Growing up I read every monthly edition Scientific American’s _The Amateur
Scientist_ column by C. L. Strong. In the May 1964 column there was a great
“getting started” introduction to laboratory glassblowing for the complete
amateur. I was only 12 years old, but it got me so interested that I tried it
myself. You can see that it’s not too hard to make very simple glass
accessories. Realistically, real laboratories require much more complex
glassware. It doesn’t take too much equipment to get started.

Sadly, the old Amateur Scientist columns are hard to come by unless you have
access to a library with Sci American going back to 1952. (The old
Mathematical Games columns by the late Martin Gardner are great too. I first
read about public key encryption just a few months after Rivest, Shamir and
Adleman wrote the MIT memo on it because it appeared in the August 1977 column
by Gardner.)

~~~
CamperBob2
You've got the book, right?

[https://archive.org/details/TheAmateurScientist](https://archive.org/details/TheAmateurScientist)

------
edwintorok
The site can't be viewed from europe "Unfortunately, our website is currently
unavailable in most European countries."

~~~
ggdG
[https://outline.com/dpSqKc](https://outline.com/dpSqKc)

------
chalence
Can anyone explain the purpose/advantage/necessity of custom, artisan blown
glass for lab equipment, as opposed to (presumably) high quality glasswear
which can be ordered from any number of laboratory equipment purveyors?

~~~
dragonwriter
If you are experimenting with new approaches, you may need novel rather than
standardized, mass produced equipment.

Heck, even if you aren't doing something _new_ you may need glassware for
which there is not a sufficiently large demand to support an industrial
production line.

------
ddoolin
Pure curiosity, does anyone know how much this type of position pays? At his
level of expertise, and at a university specifically.

~~~
mywittyname
Probably around $60k.

~~~
secabeen
A glass blower I know at one of the UC campuses makes about $95k. He's mid-
career. UC salaries are public record, so I'm sure you can find it if you want
to go hunting.

~~~
mywittyname
But Caltech records are not. I took Caltech salaries for carpenters from
Glassdoor and compared them with median salaries for carpenters in California
to get an idea of the university premium/discount. Then applied that to
scientific glass blower salaries in California. It's not perfect, but it's at
least reasonable.

I could not find a scientific glass blower salary in the California public
records system. I looked, perhaps they are titled under something else?

------
budadre75
If scientific glassblowing is such a highly sought after skill in some of
these institutes, there can well be a dedicated consulting firm. Having a
university maintaining such kind of skilled workers doesn't make sense since
universities haven't been the type of group that does it. I'm pretty sure this
kind of firm can maintain contracts with many institutes well over next many
years since this kind of mastery is not easily automated.

~~~
intrasight
Things have played out this way with other technical crafts and I think you
are correct that it will go that way here also. Actually, there's probably a
good business opp. These folks who retire might be happy to come back to work
for twice their salary - and they are already getting a pension from their
years at the university. This not something you can do offshore IMHO. "Fire"
it up!

------
msla
It's the people who make laboratory glassware, which is the classic skilled
craft taught by an apprenticeship in addition to formal classwork:

> To master scientific glass blowing, proper training and apprenticeships are
> key. Only one school in the nation, Salem Community College in New Jersey,
> offers a degree program.

> In addition to the hands-on training, which requires a knack for precision
> as well as coordination, students must take courses in organic chemistry,
> math and computer drawing.

> "You need to know enough about everything, about mechanics, about chemistry,
> about physics, about thermodynamics — whatever a chemist can come up with,
> you need to know just a little bit to get that chemist through," said Dennis
> Briening, instructional chair of Salem's two-year program. "And of course,
> you need to be very skilled, technique-wise. So it really takes a long time
> to get to a position like Rick's."

Sounds like a job for people who are bright, good with their hands, and like
making money. Really, the whole piece is about how few people are going into
this trade, and I can't see how people _can 't_ be brought into it if the
demand's there.

~~~
jbob2000
See, I have a different take on this. I think that the job should be split up,
it's a huge problem and a risk to try to wrap up all of these qualifications
into one person.

>"How do you get from a couple scratches on a piece of paper, to something you
actually go use in a lab that you trust and is not going to blow acid in your
face?"

Engineering. That's how. Instead, the academic community seems to want to rely
on rockstar glaziers the same way a startup relies on one or two developers to
handle everything from design to implementation to release.

Have the student sit down with someone who can draw proper technical drawings
and specs. Then hand those proper technical drawings off to a glazier. Then
give the finished glass to a QA person who will verify it against the specs.

~~~
Retric
That's a lot of overhead when you just want one of something.

But even then someone needs to know a lot about chemistry, glass, and glass
manufacturing to understand if something is both feasible to build and useful.

~~~
jbob2000
Over time, you could compile a book of technical drawings that could be reused
and modified for future products. I'm having a hard time believing that every
person who needs glass blown needs something totally unique that has never
been done before; it's probably slight modifications of existing products and
the occasional odd pipe/manifold.

~~~
Retric
I think the most common 98% ends up being mass produced and they just buy
that. This is only really about covering edge cases so they probably all end
up fairly unique.

Even knowing what is and is not _slight modifications of existing products_
requires a fairly deep understanding when you're dealing with highly toxic
substances.

------
Cofike
This seems like a problem of their own making. Them and other universities
could have been investing in younger glassblowers but they decided not to. Now
that their seemingly only one is retiring they are paying the piper.

------
jmpeax
"No two pieces of scientific glassware are the same"... isn't that a problem
considering science should be reproducible?

~~~
analog31
Sometimes you need just one, meaning that it's a unique piece. It means that
every piece requires interacting with the customer, and then figuring out how
to do it.

This is different than a production setting, where you can often afford to
screw up the first few in order to get the process right. And in addition to
making pieces, a scientific glassblower is also repairing them. My trips to
the glassblower's shop were usually right after I broke something.

As for reproducibility, no two voltmeters are the same, or yardsticks, etc.
Part of good scientific practice is figuring out how to obtain reproducible
results despite known variations in materials and tools.

------
code_duck
A recent post on FB from Salem CC, recruiting glassblowing students, that was
shared with a boro glass artist group:

[https://www.facebook.com/sccgec/photos/a.323088208072418.107...](https://www.facebook.com/sccgec/photos/a.323088208072418.1073741828.322985124749393/581487178899185/)

"Do you love working with glass? Would you like to take your passion for
flameworking to another level? Would you like to pursue a career in scientific
glass?

The only program of its kind in the nation, Salem Community College's
Scientific Glass Technology combines classroom study and hands-on laboratory
techniques, technical drawing and advanced fabrication. Students develop a
solid understanding of scientific glassblowing so they are able to fabricate
apparatus according to technical specifications.

Scientific glassblowers create glass apparatus for scientific research in
laboratories, universities and industry; they play a vital role in diverse
avenues of inquiry. Biological research, the pharmaceutical industry, medical
industry, chemical engineering, the semi-conductor industry, aerospace,
electro-optical systems, physics, earth sciences, food science, and mechanical
engineering are just some of the fields served by this unique skill.

Graduates of Salem Community College have earned positions at a variety of
employers including Proctor and Gamble, 3M, GE Global Research, Chemglass Life
Sciences, Pope Scientific, Cannon Instruments, Meggitt PLC, Phillips
Healthcare, L-3 Communications, the University of Notre Dame, Syracuse
University, Cal Tech Institute, Temple University, the University of Botswana,
the Australian National University, the Savannah River Nuclear Site, the
National Institute of Health, Argonne National Laboratory…among numerous
others.

Learn more about our Scientific Glass program, as well as our Glass Art
programs, and other opportunities at [http://www.salemcc.edu/glass/glass-
education-center](http://www.salemcc.edu/glass/glass-education-center) "

------
Fomite
Another article about a scientific glassblower pretty far from retirement:
[https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WvQF4SIAAFNX_7Uf](https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WvQF4SIAAFNX_7Uf)

------
jantolenaar
On a positive note, the university of Leiden, founded in 1575, was the focus
of new physics in the late 19th and early 20th century. Professor Kamerlingh
Onnes needed and founded the Leidsche Instrumentmakers School in 1901.
Students of this school become specialists in the construction of high
precision glass, metal and electronic instruments. After more than 100 years,
the school still has strong ties with the university and its students are
never jobless.

------
s0rce
I just use a private shop for custom glassware. I'm in industry now but even
when I was in academia I didn't have any issues using the outside shop. They
did excellent work.

~~~
rootw0rm
I've spent a decent amount on custom glass from Wilmad-LabGlass, I can
recommend them.

~~~
s0rce
I use Adams & Chittenden Scientific Glass in Berkeley, they happen to be down
the street from my current office but I've used them before when I was out of
California.

------
chrisbrandow
I knew the glassblower in question and he made a couple items for me. He was a
great guy. I used to love going down to his workshop.

------
dgelks
Article is not available in EU due to GDPR

------
shagie
In pointing my father to this story, he told me tales of Joe Wheeler of UW
Madison's chemistry department. His retirementish (21 years and moved to
Hawaii for their department) in 1976 [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-
bin/UW/UW-idx?type=turn...](http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/UW/UW-
idx?type=turn&entity=UW.BCOct1976.p0017&id=UW.BCOct1976&isize=text) . Note the
family business - his son (Mike) (in '76) had moved to Arizona... and there's
an article on Mike's daughter from 2017: [https://kjzz.org/content/535871/asu-
third-generation-scienti...](https://kjzz.org/content/535871/asu-third-
generation-scientific-glassblower-blends-art-and-science)

One of the bits to note form the 2017 article:

> Today, she serves four campuses of research faculty and graduate students.

> ...

> Nevertheless, scientific glassblowing is a dying art.

> "It's slowly been dwindling. Like, lately, if people retire, they kind of
> shut down the shop and start outsourcing. But us glassblowers are trying to
> change that," said Roeger.

> Roeger is working to reestablish the apprenticeship program in which she
> learned her skills. "The apprenticeship program is a four-year, full-time,
> hands-on training with a master glassblower, and it really does take that
> much to be able to produce glassware that customers can use."

Going back to the 1976 article:

> Joe was successor to Jim Davis who doubled as glassblower for the Physics
> and Chemistry Departments for many years before retiring for health reasons

UW Madison still maintains its glass shop (
[https://www.chem.wisc.edu/content/glass-
shop](https://www.chem.wisc.edu/content/glass-shop) ), a mechanical
engineering shop ( [http://chem.wisc.edu/content/instrument-
shop](http://chem.wisc.edu/content/instrument-shop) ) and an electronics shop
( [https://www.chem.wisc.edu/content/chemistry-electronics-
shop](https://www.chem.wisc.edu/content/chemistry-electronics-shop) ).

The UW Madison chemistry glass shop page has two videos on it - one from
Wisconsin Public Television and another on YouTube (
[https://youtu.be/pfeUbkU7IKQ](https://youtu.be/pfeUbkU7IKQ) )

(edit: another article about Scientific glass blowing [https://asgs-
glass.org/history-of-glassblowing-who-was-first...](https://asgs-
glass.org/history-of-glassblowing-who-was-first/) \- note the editors note
that when that article was written, Joe Wheeler was the oldest practicing
glass blower at 90 years old)

~~~
BooneJS
We saw demos of glass blowing in the Chemistry basement. Quite impressive,
especially for how nonchalant they are when doing the work.

------
Immortalin
I predict this will be a non-issue within 5 years due to 3D printing.

~~~
berbec
There's a reason we aren't discussing a shortage of plastic molders, but glass
blowers. The article specifically mentions the important qualities of glass to
research that plastics do not solve.

~~~
detaro
Devils advocate: glass 3D printing is a thing too. I'm skeptical though that
it'll be a viable alternative to blown glass soon, especially not in-house.

------
bayesian_horse
They'll probably find a way to 3D print glass ...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Someone linked an example already:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17244062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17244062).
They can't do complex glassware. I'd have thought a glass-blowing robot would
be doable.

~~~
bayesian_horse
I figured it would be complicated. Mostly, I guess, the need for these glass
wares isn't big enough yet to solve that problem.

------
oceanghost
I would love to do this.

------
boromi
salary and benefits of the job?

~~~
buro9
[https://www.sokanu.com/careers/glass-
blower/salary/](https://www.sokanu.com/careers/glass-blower/salary/) says:

"The highest earning Glass Blowers in the United States earn $47,720 per year"

I would guess that a master scientific glass blower would earn more and have
better conditions, but not an order of magnitude more.

------
lifeisstillgood
"""Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European
countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options
that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue
to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with
our award-winning journalism."""

oh ....

~~~
ryandrake
What a passive aggressive way to say “we can’t figure out how to serve this
web site to you without breaking the law.”

~~~
Sir_Substance
Yeah, but they even managed to fuck that up. Either they forgot to block
Iceland or my script blocker is preventing their euroblocker from working.

~~~
crroww
So far, the GDPR only applies to members* within the European Union, which
Iceland is not. Iceland is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), to
which GDPR is most likely to extend in the future. If you are posting from the
future, then disregard this reply.

*businesses and organizations, if you will.

~~~
Sir_Substance
Annoyingly it's hard for me to find a citation that says "yes, obviously 'in
the union' means the EEA as well", but there's no "most likely" about it. It
seems it has for some time been a foregone conclusion that GDPR will be part
of the EEA agreement and the relevant nations are already working to integrate
it into their national code of laws.

It's hard to find out whether that process is complete in Iceland because I
don't speak Icelandic and the parliament doesn't translate everything they
produce, but the EU has already started telling people that GDPR protects
everyone in the EEA:

[https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-
political/files/d...](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-
political/files/data-protection-factsheet-sme-obligations_en.pdf) (Page 15,
yellow box)

More links on the subject:

[https://www.personuvernd.is/ny-
personuverndarloggjof-2018/](https://www.personuvernd.is/ny-
personuverndarloggjof-2018/)

[https://chaucer.com/rights-and-scope-of-gdpr-for-non-eu-
resi...](https://chaucer.com/rights-and-scope-of-gdpr-for-non-eu-residents/)

[https://planit.legal/blog/en/the-applicability-of-the-
gdpr-w...](https://planit.legal/blog/en/the-applicability-of-the-gdpr-within-
the-eea/)

~~~
crroww
It does make sense, and probably should apply on Iceland.

It was the planit.legal-link that confused me to begin with. Written so short
time ago (Feb 18) while stating: "a rapid implementation procedure and the
extension of GDPR to the entire EEA is expected". Rapid indeed.

After some reading, I notice a discrepancy of GDPR articles stating that EEA
is affected immediately, while from an EEA/EEA state point-of-view seem more
concerned with EU-EEA agreements "to be concluded" and laws to be applied,
just as you also implied.

I guess the GDPR alarmists has dulled my senses and I was expecting some kind
of catch in this case. Cry wolf..

------
amriksohata
Can't see it because of gdpr

~~~
scrumbledober
Is this because they don't allow you to consent to tracking and view the
content, or just because you refuse to consent to tracking?

~~~
theoh
The LA Times' owners have a blanket redirect in place. Very shoddy.

But the article is available here:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20180605190135/http://www.latimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180605190135/http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-
me-caltech-glassblower-20160613-snap-story.html)

------
oneplane
Can't read this, GDPR walled...

~~~
microcolonel
Ask your government to fix your laws, if there is anything resembling
accountability in the EU legislative process.

~~~
ceejayoz
The GDPR _is_ the fix.

~~~
emilfihlman
An an European, GDPR is a horrible cancer.

~~~
mywittyname
GDPR is 90% process companies should be following anyway (industry best-
practices) and 10% processes that should be trivial to implement (retrieving /
deleting user data).

Calling it a cancer suggest you've not actually had to comply with it, you're
just parroting all the people who are blowing it out of proportion because
they don't understand the law or just don't think privacy is as important as
ad revenue.

------
amelius
I'm not sure if it all matters, because academia will be replaced by big
companies anyway, sometime soon ...

