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.
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.
I and several colleagues retired over the last few years from a major electrical engineering company. One of my colleagues retired exactly at retirement age but no effort had been put into finding a replacement so the management suddenly scrambled to find someone with a fraction of the expertise who he could train over a period of about six months. Of course they failed to find a suitable candidate and six months was too short.
My situation was similar, I spent six months trying to transfer half a lifetime of domain and software development expertise to a very keen and competent young engineer, but of course this had to be done in between all his other nearly full time responsibilities.
This is what happens when organizations don't believe in the long term future, just next year's balance sheet.
Caltech actually hires very little extra administrative staff, much less than other universities. They actually frame it as, IIRC, "we're resisting the temptation to hire more administrators."
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.
My impression is that university work would mesh well with artistic types, all the people I know there are easy going, rarely work a full day, and unless they’re looking for advancement are happy to be reasonably well paid with a lot of job security and low stress.
Lab work and higher math may be a problem, but I’ve read many times today’s best botanists and agricultural students go into cannabis so the worlds may not be as incompatible as one would think.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
Walk into the MET machine shop (not the ME machine shop, those guys will be hacks, it's just the nature of the different priorities of the different programs) during any given weekday evening and ask the TA to recommenced someone.
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.
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.
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.
"Why? Why can't we find good glassblowers? Who is telling people they shouldn't take up jobs in the trades? What vile troublemaker is spreading this harmful rumor that the only viable career path is a university degree? Oh, hey, gotta speak at a high school in twenty minutes to promote education."
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.
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.
That's a great deal. And yes, most universities don't need a full-time glass-blower, if they need specialized glassware they can hire services or make orders to companies.
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.
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.)
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?
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.
I don't think it necessarily matters that it's glassware, but in generally I'd always rather work with a local master who I can talk to face to face with years of experience in the industry, rather than ordering from a company in China with little input, longer wait times, and (most likely) lower quality due to less experienced workers. Of course these are two extremes, and it's possible that there are other local professionals that can bridge the cap, but the advantages of having an onsite master still seem fairly obvious
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
"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.
[+] [-] kevin_b_er|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewla|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|7 years ago|reply
My situation was similar, I spent six months trying to transfer half a lifetime of domain and software development expertise to a very keen and competent young engineer, but of course this had to be done in between all his other nearly full time responsibilities.
This is what happens when organizations don't believe in the long term future, just next year's balance sheet.
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|7 years ago|reply
Mediocrity: it takes a lot less time and most people won’t notice the difference until it’s too late.
[+] [-] code_duck|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dpeck|7 years ago|reply
Lab work and higher math may be a problem, but I’ve read many times today’s best botanists and agricultural students go into cannabis so the worlds may not be as incompatible as one would think.
[+] [-] adrianratnapala|7 years ago|reply
:)
Since obviously such behaviour is totally unheard of in universities.
[+] [-] saryant|7 years ago|reply
My experience from dating someone at Caltech is that this would not, in any possible way, be an issue.
[+] [-] 2muchcoffeeman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzahola|7 years ago|reply
How ableist! Some people can’t choose whether they smoke cannabis or not. They need it like diabetics need insulin.
[+] [-] sitkack|7 years ago|reply
https://books.google.com/books?id=HKLUF3PWOGYC&pg=PA66&lpg=P...
> 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/...
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|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|7 years ago|reply
Walk into the MET machine shop (not the ME machine shop, those guys will be hacks, it's just the nature of the different priorities of the different programs) during any given weekday evening and ask the TA to recommenced someone.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thriptic|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] romwell|7 years ago|reply
Correction: the uni don't reward tenure track people either these days.
Working 6 years for a $55K salary with a nonzero prospect of getting fired from your field forever afterwards isn't exactly a rewarding experience.
[+] [-] zeth___|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ISL|7 years ago|reply
I don't know what will happen in another generation.
[+] [-] Gibbon1|7 years ago|reply
For whatever reason I know a lot of
a) Neon workers who used to do scientific glass blowing. But left because neon paid better.
b) Glass workers that make glass pipes because it pays better than scientific glass blowing or neon work.
Note: Potheads will spend in ordinate amounts of money on paraphernalia.
[+] [-] meko|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SilasX|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daodedickinson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hasz|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] John_KZ|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] privong|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimMurnaghan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomelders|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] todd8|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
https://archive.org/details/TheAmateurScientist
[+] [-] edwintorok|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chalence|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] okmokmz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddoolin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywittyname|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] budadre75|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intrasight|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msla|7 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] Cofike|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmpeax|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
https://www.facebook.com/sccgec/photos/a.323088208072418.107...
"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 "
[+] [-] Fomite|7 years ago|reply