Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble, or parison, with the aid of a blowpipe, or blow tube. A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer.

As a novel glass forming technique created in the middle of the last century BC, glassblowing exploited a working property of glass which was previously unknown to the glassworkers: inflation. Inflation refers to the expansion of a molten blob of glass by introducing a small amount of air to it. This property is based on the liquid structure of glass where the atoms are held together by strong chemical bonds in a disordered and random network, therefore molten glass is viscous enough to be blown and gradually hardens as it loses heat. In order to increase the stiffness of the molten glass, which in turn facilitates the process of blowing, there is a subtle change in the composition of glass. With reference to their studies of the ancient glass assemblages from Sepphoris of Israel, Fischer and McCray postulated that the concentration of natron, which acts as flux in glass, is slightly lower in blown vessels than those manufactured by casting. Lower concentration of natron would have allowed the glass to be stiffer for blowing.

Thomas Long (August 7, 1836 – ?) was an Ontario merchant and political figure. He represented Simcoe West in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a Conservative from 1875 to 1883.

He was born in County Limerick, Ireland in 1836, began his education there and went to Simcoe County in Canada West in 1850, where he apprenticed with a merchant. He finished his schooling in Buffalo, New York. Long moved to Collingwood in 1857, where he managed a store for merchants before going into business for himself the following year. He married Ann Patton in 1861. In 1868, his brother joined him in the business, which include the sale of dry goods, clothing and groceries, a flour mill and steamboats. He served on the town council from 1864 to 1870. Long was a director of the Lake Superior Navigation Company and of the Georgian Bay Transportation Company.