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Chance Glass Factory

I worked at a place in Spring Lane, Malvern, just round the corner from Chance. Went past it everyday. Very unassuming building, very low key industrial estate premises apparently put there in 1947, unlike those photos of the Smethwick factory in this thread. They would have been the lab glass offshoot of Pilkington at that time (71 to 76), but as everyone will know, they went private in 1992, keeping the name.

You will know this,
"In the early 20th century, many new ways of making glass evolved at Chance Brothers such as the innovative welding of a cathode ray tube used for radar detection."

But did you know this,
"In 1933, the company was reported to be involved in an attempt to contact "any intelligent life" on the planet Mars, using adapted lighthouse optics from a mountaintop, the Jungfrau, in Switzerland."
Source. Wikipedia.

Just a tidbit.

Andrew.
 
I don't know if I have mentioned this before but when I worked for Henry Hope & Sons in Smethwick in the early 1960s we constructed the steelwork for one of Chance's lighthouses and fitted it out for them before it was taken apart again and shipped abroad in order to test that everything fitted OK.
 
Viv,
Perhaps you will like this. Woulf bottle manually made, no standard joints . Rescued lab equipment that was originally at Somerdale the lab there was having a clearout . Have 2 of them. I think it would have well predated the lab glassblower at Bournville (Bill Blower - Truely the name , It is a black country name ) Certainly pre WW2, likely pre WW1Woulf bottle.jpg
 
Great piece of glass Mike. Would never have occurred to me that Bournville had its own glass blowers. Viv.
 
Only one, and he retired in the 1970s. He had a little sideline. For those he had contact with and knew who got married he would make them a small glass giraffe. The tradition was that if if it later got broken , then a pregnancy would soon happen. (though I wonder if that was a story spread by Bill to ensure people took care of it!!)
As I said, I think the bottle predates him, as his work was much better.
 
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