1962 glass could be Corning's next bonanza seller | Hacker News Reader

1962 glass could be Corning's next bonanza seller

finance.yahoo.com

41 pointsevo_924 comments

Technical errors in articles like this stand out so glaringly when they are about something you know. It reminds me to never rely on journalism for technical details about something I don't know well.

"To make Chemcor, Corning ran the sheets through a "tempering" process that set up internal stresses in the material. The same principle is behind the toughness of Pyrex glass, but Chemcor was tempered in a chemical bath, not by heat treatment."

NOoo - the strength of Pyrex DOES NOT come from being tempered, it is a chemical difference. Pyrex glass is a brand of borosilicate, and it's the high silica content and boron that make it both more mechanically durable and resistant to thermal shock. I don't even think you CAN heat temper borosilicate.

This has been a message from Chem lab dork, carry on, carry on...

Unfortunately, modern Pyrex contains no borosilicate but is now made from "tempered soda-lime": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex

That only refers to Pyrex cookware, not lab or glassblowing glass. Historically, Pyrex was a brand of borosilicate labware, glassblowing supplies and cookware, but the cookware brand was spun off by Corning in the 90s. They started making Pyrex brand glassblowing glass in China, and it's still borosilicate (it makes a huge difference for scientific glass blowing!).

> This has been a message from Chem lab dork, carry on, carry on...

Off topic - I remember chucking Nalgene bottles in some labs. What did you think about when Nalgene went from $1 bottles people threw away to brightly colored $15 consumer products?

It makes me hope I am smart enough to do the same thing when the chance comes!

My impression is that Chemcor hadn't been completely shelved after its invention, just that it hadn't found any hugely profitable uses. I'm reasonably sure I've seen the brand name before.

http://www.corning.com/gorillaglass/gorilla_timeline.aspx says "1965: Chemcor glass was used in many commercial and industrial products until the 1990’s. Variants of Chemcor continue to be used in ophthalmic and pharmaceutical products."

I found http://www.springerlink.com/content/w1142mnnt5u61410/ which is a journal article (translated from Russian) from 1982, discussing the ion-exchange annealing process used to strengthen Chemcor and similar glasses.

I also found an interesting Time magazine article from 1962 about Corning, which opens with a paragraph about Chemcor, and later mentions "[Corning's] new Chemcor has a wide range of potential industrial uses as a cheap, strong substitute for plastic, but has so far been used only for a virtually unbreakable tableware called Centura."

Apparently Centura was not microwave-safe, and was discontinued in the late 70s: http://www.corellecorner.com/centura-dinnerware-tableware-pa...

Surprisingly enough, the Corning website has some interesting tidbits that aren't in the OP's story: http://www.corning.com/news_center/corning_stories/gorilla_g.... An interesting read.

The thought that struck me was that it was lucky it wasn't someone's startup project, as Corning had the finances to sit on it for 50 years until it found a market use...

Hypothetically, this is what patents are actually for. By describing your process to the point that anybody could replicate it from the patent alone, the government grants you a monopoly, and once that is up it theoretically never disappears from public knowledge again.

Realistically there are issues of course, but that's the theory.

(This is actually one of my core reasons to be against software patents; even if they otherwise worked as designed, in practice a lot of software patents are ten pages of legalese, half or more dedicated to simply enumerating the presence of a computer in the invention and various combinations of "on a network" and "with a disk drive" etc, and in the end the patent document is usually more of a spec then an implementation. If we really carried through on the logic of software patents, a software patent ought to require a software implementation in clear source code that is proved to implement the desired algorithm within a reference environment, and the source code should itself have no copyright protection. Combine that with a shorter term and I'd at least object much less, though I ultimately do agree in abolition in this domain; trade secrets and copyright are adequate to the task, if not already overkill.)

Somewhat more directly on topic, I bet 1960s and 1970s material science patents probably hold a few more things that are useful today that weren't useful then.

Of course a patent still wouldn't have helped in this case if it has been around for 50 years.

No, that's the exact opposite of my point. By patenting something, you stick in it the database of "public knowledge" so that it could be discovered 50 years later if need be. That means it wouldn't be necessary for Corning to sit on it for 50 years. Sitting on things for 50 years and making the current status of the filer irrelevant (dead, disincorporated, whatever) is one of the purposes of the patent system.

The "limited monopoly" is part of a social contract and understanding the whole contract is important.

However, if they successfully commercialize sans patents - it'll be a good case against patents being needed to monetize. Finding markets, production advantages and expertise is still a bigger part of the equation than King George fencing off your market.

Check out US patent 3,223,785. It's a patent on a phone switch from 1960, including both circuit diagrams and program listing.

A patent wouldn't have helped the startup...

This was invented 48 years ago; would relevant patents have expired by now? What would prevent other companies from also manufacturing this glass?

Trade secrets most likely. It would be cloned eventually, but Corning would have a lock on the market while other companies did their R&D.

probably nothing. But to get to market when your competitor has 48 years on you and has the ability to ramp up production extremely quickly kind of takes the wind out of your sails if you know what I mean.

"...Corning dug out Chemcor from its database, tweaked it for manufacturing in LCD tanks, and renamed it Gorilla."

My guess is that "tweaking" is covered by new patents, although anyone should be able to produce the original Chemcor now.

Exactly. In particular, it sounds like they've revamped the manufacturing process a bit to take advantage of modern techniques. This new process will probably be the new patent, rather than the glass formula.

Here's a video of the ball drop test mentioned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTX79QU-1-U

Compared to regular glass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=forSXEJIM3E

I find it hard to believe that there wasn't a demand for stronger, thinner, lighter, scratch-resistant glass until recently. There must be more to this story.

I'm guessing it cost more than companies wanted to pay until recently.

I worked in Corning's S&T plant (Sullivan Park) for a number of years. Corning is all about process and the recipe may have been around for a while, but the process surrounding getting large enough (in the case of TVs) imperfection free pieces of glass was extremely difficult and time consuming. I don't think they really 'sat on it' and 'dug it out' so much as they were able to perfect the manufacture of some of their other recipes more quickly.

The glass has to be completely clear, completely flat and extremely thin - not an easy result to get at no matter what your recipe.

The Droid's screen is apparently Gorilla Glass and it's been "confirmed" by somebody that the iPhone 4 uses it too.

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