Working glass

Having access to a glass workshop certainly helps with experiments at the technical university of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Shown here is a glass blower polishing the extremities of a glass tube section aimed for a use in a plasma reactor. Such activity was quite common back in the days when lamps were still being manufactured in town at the Philips lamp research lab at Emmasingel, in the city center. It is interesting to note that the technician is wearing didymium glasses which blocks off the sodium emission and part of the shortwave infrared radiation coming from the white hot glass extremity.