How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
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Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#2Fantastic read! I like how old discoveries can become relevant again. Applications of lateral thinking really make a good read.
Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#3Beautiful and what a fantastic attitude for a company that size. Reminds me of the old HP.
Glass is amazing material, if you like this nad you haven't seen them yet google for aerogel.
Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#4 "The story of their collaboration—including Jobs’ attempt to lecture Weeks on the principles of glass and his insistence that such a feat could be accomplished—is well known."
Excellent article otherwise!
Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#5For some reason, on Chrome, the linked article is teeny (text is completely unreadable).
Anyway - it's funny how some of the best discoveries are accidental. I don't know anything about Don Stookey, but I'm guessing this played a large part of his induction into the inventor's hall of fame. But he didn't really do anything, he didn't set out to make the next best glass, but he accidentally did. Usually hall of fames are for decided effort to do something awesome (like a baseball hall of fame, you need some luck, but its a lot of skill and practice).
I've been wondering lately about the sheer number of cracked iPhone 4/4S/ will be 5 screens. If this glass is so great, why does it break so frequently from small heights? Does the metal casing around it transfer the blunt of the force to the glass and make it crack? I haven't seen too many other phones with cracked screens, would a plastic casing surrounding the glass absorb some of the fall?
Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#6For some reason, on Chrome, the linked article is teeny (text is completely unreadable). Anyway - it's funny how some of the best discoveries are accidental. I don't know anything about Don Stookey, but I'm guessing this played a large part of his induction into the inventor's hall of fame. But he didn't really do anything, he didn't set out to make the next best glass, but he accidentally did. Usually hall of fames…
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Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#7For some reason, on Chrome, the linked article is teeny (text is completely unreadable). Anyway - it's funny how some of the best discoveries are accidental. I don't know anything about Don Stookey, but I'm guessing this played a large part of his induction into the inventor's hall of fame. But he didn't really do anything, he didn't set out to make the next best glass, but he accidentally did. Usually hall of fames…
For some reason, on Chrome, the linked article is teeny (text is completely unreadable).
You probably once zoomed out on a previous Wired.com article: Chrome retains text zoom settings per-domain.
cmd+0 or ctrl+0 to zoom to actual size and reset.
Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#8"The story of their collaboration—including Jobs’ attempt to lecture Weeks on the principles of glass and his insistence that such a feat could be accomplished—is well known." It's not well known to everyone. This is the first I've heard of this, and a quick search didn't turn up anything beyond the details in this article. Excellent article otherwise!
The story was in Walter Issacson's biography of Jobs.
Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#9"The story of their collaboration—including Jobs’ attempt to lecture Weeks on the principles of glass and his insistence that such a feat could be accomplished—is well known." It's not well known to everyone. This is the first I've heard of this, and a quick search didn't turn up anything beyond the details in this article. Excellent article otherwise!
From the Isaacson biography:
Jobs described the type of glass Apple wanted for the iPhone, and Weeks told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what they dubbed “gorilla glass.” It was incredibly strong, but it had never found a market, so Corning quit making it. Jobs said he doubted it was good enough, and he started explaining to Weeks how glass was made. This amused Weeks, who of course knew more than Jobs about that topic. “Can you shut up,” Weeks interjected, “and let me teach you some science?” Jobs was taken aback and fell silent. Weeks went to the whiteboard and gave a tutorial on the chemistry, which involved an ion-exchange process that produced a compression layer on the surface of the glass. This turned Jobs around, and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as Corning could make within six months. “We don’t have the capacity,” Weeks replied. “None of our plants make the glass now.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored and confident but not used to Jobs’s reality distortion field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn’t accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.”
Re: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
#10For some reason, on Chrome, the linked article is teeny (text is completely unreadable). Anyway - it's funny how some of the best discoveries are accidental. I don't know anything about Don Stookey, but I'm guessing this played a large part of his induction into the inventor's hall of fame. But he didn't really do anything, he didn't set out to make the next best glass, but he accidentally did. Usually hall of fames…
" he didn't really do anything"
I think what you are missing out, is that this invention came about from hard work, lots of experiments, and recognizing what he had on his hands when he saw it:
"Don Stookey knew he had botched the experiment. One day in 1952, the Corning Glass Works chemist placed a sample of photosensitive glass inside a furnace and set the temperature to 600 degrees Celsius. At some point during the run, a faulty controller let the temperature climb to 900 degrees C. Expecting a melted blob of glass and a ruined furnace, Stookey opened the door to discover that, weirdly, his lithium silicate had transformed into a milky white plate. When he tried to remove it, the sample slipped from the tongs and crashed to the floor. Instead of shattering, it bounced."
See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#Discovery
"It was a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College), Fleming noticed a Petri dish containing Staphylococcus plate culture he mistakenly left open, was contaminated by blue-green mould, which formed a visible growth. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded the mould released a substance that repressed the growth and lysing the bacteria. He grew a pure culture and discovered it was a Penicillium mould, now known to be Penicillium notatum."