HENRY DEACON 168 



produce something else praiseworthy." Ever, 

 my dear Nasmyth, yours most truly, 



M. FARADAY." 



The training and experience which Henry 

 Deacon had had, enabled him to obtain an 

 appointment as a manager in the glass works 

 of Messrs. Pilkington Bros., St. Helens. He 

 went to St. Helens about the year 1848, when 

 he was about 26 years of age. 



Deacon would especially have had to plan 

 and superintend machinery for smoothing and 

 polishing "German Plate." In those days 

 the manufacturing of glass was a very 

 " pottering " affair compared with what it now 

 is. Small furnaces, little pots, imperfect 

 combustion, inferior machinery, badly arranged 

 grates, dark, low, stuffy, dingy, dimal sheds, 

 and few, if any, appliances for economising 

 labour. This was the state of affairs forty 

 years ago, when Henry Deacon was employed 

 in the glass works. 



In glass making, and in St. Helens, he 

 made no very decided mark by any lasting 

 and original invention ; he was then a young 

 man and had much to learn, especially in a 



