Laboratory glassware
Glassware evolved as other ancient civilizations including the Syrians, Egyptians, and Romans refined the art of glassmaking.
Mary the Jewess, an alchemist in Alexandria during the 1st century AD, is credited for the creation of some of the first glassware for chemical such as the kerotakis which was used for the collection of fumes from a heated material.
[1] Despite these creations, glassware for chemical uses was still limited during this time because of the low thermal stability necessary for experimentation and therefore was primarily made using copper or ceramic materials.
During this time, the Venetians gathered knowledge about glassmaking from the East with information coming from Syria and the Byzantine Empire.
[1] This combination of better raw materials and information from the East led to the production of clearer and higher thermal and chemical durability leading towards the shift to the use of glassware in laboratories.
[2] During the 19th century, more chemists began to recognize the importance of glassware due to its transparency, and the ability to control the conditions of experiments.
[3] Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who invented the test tube, and Michael Faraday both contributed to the rise of chemical glassblowing.
[5] Following the development of borosilicate glass by Otto Schott in the late 19th century, most laboratory glassware was manufactured in Germany up until the start of World War I.
The task may be readily performed using low cost, mass-produced glassware, or it may require a specialized piece created by a glass blower.
Many parts are available fused to a length of glass tubing to create highly specialized piece of laboratory glassware.
The metrological grade then can be determined by both the confidence interval around the nominal value of measurement marks and the traceability of the calibration to an NIST standard.
[12] Laboratory glassware is composed of silica, which is considered insoluble in most substances, with a few exceptions such as hydrofluoric acid or strong alkali hydroxides.
[13] Cleaning laboratory glassware is a frequent necessity and may be done using multiple methods depending on the nature of the contamination and the purity requirements of its use.
When cleaning is finished it is common practice to rinse glassware multiple times, often finally with deionised water, before suspending it upside down on drying racks.
