Corning Inc.

Corning Glass Works was founded in 1851 by Amory Houghton, in Somerville, Massachusetts, originally as the Bay State Glass Co. It later moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and operated as the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. The company moved again to its ultimate home and eponym, the city of Corning, New York, in 1868, under leadership of the founder's son, Amory Houghton Jr.

In 1915, Corning created an improved heat resistant glass formula and launched Pyrex, the first-ever consumer cooking products made with temperature-resistant glass, in 1915.

The California Institute of Technology's 200-inch (5.1 m) telescope mirror at Palomar Observatory was cast by Corning during 1934–1936, out of low expansion borosilicate glass. In 1932, George Ellery Hale approached Corning with the challenge of fabricating the required optic for his Palomar project. A previous effort to fabricate the optic from fused quartz had failed. Corning's first attempt was a failure, the cast blank having voids. Using lessons learned, Corning was successful in the casting of the second blank. After a year of cooling, during which it was almost lost to a flood, in 1935, the blank was completed. The first blank now resides in Corning's Museum of Glass.

In 1935, Corning formed a joint venture with bottle maker Owens-Illinois, creating the company now known as Owens Corning. They spun off Owens Corning as an independent company in 1938, and it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1952.

The company had a history of science-based innovations following World War II and the strategy by management was research and "disruptive" and "on demand" product innovation.

In 1962, Corning developed Chemcor, a new toughened automobile windshield designed to be thinner and lighter than existing windshields, which reduced danger of personal injury by shattering into small granules when smashed. This toughened glass had a chemically hardened outer layer, and its manufacture incorporated an ion exchange and a "fusion process" in special furnaces that Corning built in its Christiansburg, Virginia facility. Corning developed it as an alternative to laminated windshields with the intention of becoming an automotive industry supplier. After being installed as side glass in a limited run of 1968 Plymouth Barracudas and Dodge Darts, Chemcor windshields debuted on the 1970 model year Javelins and AMXs built by American Motors Corporation (AMC). As there were no mandatory safety standards for motor vehicle windshields, the larger automakers had no financial incentive to change from the cheaper existing products. Corning terminated its windshield project in 1971, after it turned out to be one of the company's "biggest and most expensive failures." However, like many Corning innovations, the unique process to manufacture this automotive glass was resurrected and is today the basis of their very profitable LCD glass business.

In late 1970, the company announced that researchers Robert D. Maurer, Donald Keck, Peter C. Schultz, and Frank Zimar had demonstrated an optical fiber with a low optical attenuation of 17 dB per kilometer by doping silica glass with titanium. A few years later they produced a fiber with only 4 dB/km, using germanium oxide as the core dopant. Such low attenuations made fiber optics practical for telecommunications and networking. Corning became the world's leading manufacturer of optical fiber.

In 1977, considerable attention was given to Corning's Z Glass project. Z Glass was a product used in television picture tubes. Due to a number of factors, the exact nature of which are subject to dispute, this project was considered a steep loss in profit and productivity. The following year the project made a partial recovery. This incident has been cited as a case study by the Harvard School of Business.

The turning point for Corning came when Apple approached it to develop a robust display screen for its upcoming iPhone. Later, other companies also adopted its Gorilla Glass screen. In 2011, Corning announced the expansion of existing facilities and the construction of a Gen 10 facility co-located with the Sharp Corporation manufacturing complex in Sakai, Osaka, Japan. The LCD glass substrate is produced without heavy metals. Corning is a leading manufacturer of the glass used in liquid crystal displays.

The company continues to produce optical fiber and cable for the communications industry at its Wilmington and Concord plants in North Carolina. It is also a major manufacturer of ceramic emission control devices for catalytic converters in cars and light trucks that use gasoline engines. The company is also investing in the production of ceramic emission control products for diesel engines as a result of tighter emission standards for those engines both in the U.S. and abroad.

In 2007, Corning introduced an optic fiber, ClearCurve, which uses nanostructure technology to facilitate the small radius bending found in FTTX installations.

Gorilla Glass, an outgrowth of the 1960s Chemcor project, is a high-strength alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass used as a protective cover glass offering scratch resistance and durability in many touchscreens. According to the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Gorilla Glass was used in the first iPhone released in 2007.