Short answers, pulled from the story.
Glassblowing was developed by Phoenician and Syrian craftsmen in the first century BC. They discovered that molten glass could be inflated into a bubble using a blowpipe, a property of glass that had been previously unknown to glassworkers.
Free-blowing uses only the glassworker's breath and skill to shape molten glass, and held the dominant position in glass forming from the 1st century BC until the late 19th century. Mold-blowing, which arrived during the first part of the second quarter of the 1st century AD, inflates molten glass into a carved wooden or metal mold, letting the mold's interior surface determine the final shape and texture.
Raw materials are transformed into glass at around 2400 degrees Fahrenheit, then the working temperature is reduced to around 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for blowing. Most glassblowing is done between 1600 and 1900 degrees Fahrenheit, and annealing to prevent cracking is carried out between 700 and 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
The studio glass movement began in 1962 when Harvey Littleton, a ceramics professor, and Dominick Labino, a chemist and engineer, held two workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art, experimenting with melting glass in a small furnace. Littleton promoted the use of small furnaces in individual artists' studios, and the movement eventually produced artists such as Dale Chihuly, Dante Marioni, Fritz Driesbach, and Marvin Lipofsky.
Ennion was among the most prominent glassworkers from Lebanon during the Roman period. He was renowned for producing multi-paneled mold-blown glass vessels of complex shapes, arrangements, and decorative motifs, and his workshop's surviving pieces constitute some of the earliest evidence of glassblowing found in the eastern territories of the Roman Empire.
The glory hole is the second of three furnaces used in glassblowing, used to reheat a piece between working steps. The lehr, also called the annealer, is the third furnace; it cools finished glass slowly over a period of a few hours to a few days to prevent cracking or shattering from thermal stress.