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.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
The flame of a lamp, or candle, condensed and directed by a current of air, is exceedingly useful in a great number of arts. The instrument which is employed to modify flame is the Blowpipe. This is an indispensable agent for jewellers, watch-makers, enamellers, glass-blowers, natural philosophers, chemists, mineralogists, and, indeed, for all persons who are occupied with the sciences, or their application to the arts. Its employment offers immense advantages in a multitude of circumstances; and the best method of making use of so powerful an agent ought to be well known to every person who is likely to be called upon to adopt it.
Students, especially those who desire to exercise themselves in chemical manipulation, must feel the want of a simple and economical process, by means of which they could give to glass tubes, of which they make great use, the various forms that are necessary for particular operations. How much reason have they to complain of the high price of the instruments of which they make continual use! The studies of a great number are shackled from want of opportunity to exercise themselves in manipulation; and many, not daring to be at the expense of a machine of which they doubt their ability to make an advantageous use, figure to themselves the employment of the glass-blower’s apparatus as being beset with difficulties, and so rest without having even an idea of the numberless instruments which can be made by its means.
Many persons would very willingly occupy their leisure time in practising the charming art of working glass and enamels with the blowpipe; but the anticipated expense of the apparatus, and the difficulties which they imagine to foresee in the execution of work of this kind, always repels them.
The new species of blowpipe which we have offered to the public, and which has received the approbation of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, obviates all these inconveniences: its moderate price, its portability, and the facility with which it can be used, adapt it to general employment.