THE inventor, of course, gains most of the glory.

But there was also a terrific contribution, involving superhuman effort, patience and time, from the ordinary glassworkers of St Helens in perfecting a production method which was to revolutionise their industry.

They toiled in conditions of excessive heat and considerable danger, working with previously untried combinations of materials. But their home-life sacrifice (and that of their long-suffering wives) has by no means been overlooked.

Tom Grundy, one of the team leaders, charts the shop-floor progress and ultimate success in his book, 'The Global Miracle of Float Glass', written as a tribute to St Helens and its glassworkers. This has since been backed up by a 20-minute video tape.

I have been privileged to receive a signed copy of Tom's publication which has found its way all around the globe. It had been a four-year labour of love for Tom, now 82 and living in Liverpool Road, Pewfall, Haydock.

With no sponsors forthcoming, he went it alone as sole author , publisher, financer and salesman. "I prayed about it", he says, "and eventually 3,000 books were sold. Many found homes in more than 50 countries".

There was absolutely no profit in it for Tom, a deeply committed Christian. "But that was not the exercise", explains the man who wished to pen a lasting tribute to his fellow glassworkers' achievement. Tom himself started at Pilkington in 1933, rising rapidly from the shopfloor to foreman. In 1963, he became a manager at Cowley Hill Works.

There are plenty of early historical notes in Tom's book, but the main thrust of the story centres on the 1950s.

It was in 1952 that the late Sir Alastair Pilkington (who penned the foreword to Tom's book) conceived the idea of forming a ribbon of glass by floating melted raw materials at high temperature over a bath of molten tin. It proved to be the brainchild of a genius - but it took seven years and the equivalent, in today's cash terms, of £80million before the process was fully developed.

And it is the 'teething' time, between those dates that Tom has graphically recorded in impressive detail.

The heat, the exhaustion, the morale-sapping early setbacks, the dedicated resolution of the shopfloor team, the strains put on domestic life . . . and then the final triumph. Tom Grundy captures it all, spangling the text with the names of those who shared the revolutionary experience with him.

Sir Alastair, in that foreword which specially singled Tom out for praise, said: "It was a tremendous struggle and the glassmakers who worked on the process did an heroic job.

They were so dedicated . . . that the problem was to try to avoid them doing too much. Without their efforts, Float would never have come through to success".

ANYONE wishing to purchase a copy of 'The Global Miracle of Float Glass' (£5.95) and the video tape (£4.50, with all proceeds to the Children's Overseas Mission, can give Tom a call on St Helens 23122.