Monday, Nov. 07, 1938
Wonder-Child
Ten years before the Civil War, Amory Houghton invested his money in a glass factory at Somerville, Mass. Eleven years before the turn of the century Michael Owens, tired of blowing glass with his lungs, invented a machine to do it for him. From Houghton's investment grew Corning Glass Works; from Owens' invention, Owens-Illinois Glass Co. Last week, after seven years' experimenting, these two famed oldsters fostered a wonder-child--Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., the first U. S. glass company devoted to the manufacture of textiles.
Fibre glass, which is simply glass drawn superfine, was made in Germany as far back as 1878. But this German product was coarse, expensive, heavy, crudely made (example: a woman on a jacked-up bicycle would pedal the fibre onto the back wheel). Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. will make fibre by forcing white-hot glass through tiny orifices with a jet of steam. Resulting fibres are 2/10,000 of an inch in diameter. About 100 of them are twisted into a strand of yarn which looks and feels like wool.
Fiberglas will not yet make dresses; they would be too heavy. But since it is non-inflammable and can take color (asbestos cannot), it is well suited for curtains, rugs, hangings. For house insulation it is lighter than rock wool. For air conditioning it makes a fibrous filter which scours air of dirt and moisture. For wire insulation it is more compact, sometimes more economical than cotton, which must be made non-inflammable or used with rubber.*
Owens-Illinois and Corning are model parents for the new company. Owens, with total assets of $87,562,251, is the world's largest bottlemaker; their chemist, Games Slayter, started perfecting fibre glass seven years ago. Corning (assets and profits secret) has specialized in technical refinements; it was to Corning that Thomas Edison went in 1878 asking for a little glass bubble in which to put his incandescent filament.
Though Fiberglas will combine Owens and Corning facilities and abilities, it will be an independent corporate structure, technically a subsidiary of neither. But its board chairman will be Amory Houghton, Corning's president and fourth-generation descendant of that company's founder; its president, Harold Boeschenstein, vice president and general manager of Owens-Illinois. And Fiberglas' 27,500 shares of $100 cumulative preferred, 402,500 authorized shares of no-par common will be sold not to the public but to the step-parent firms.
* Corning and Owens glass fibres are already being used for various purposes by Anaconda Wire & Cable Co., General Electric Co., Westinghouse Electric Co., Holland Furnace Co., Frigidaire Corp., several others.
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