By John Bayne, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Consumer Electronics at Corning Incorporated

Corning is defined by two vital characteristics: a long history and a deep commitment to innovation. Maybe that is why I find this Maya Angelou quote so fitting: “If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.” Here at Corning, we know where we are going in large part, because we know from where we came. We create new-to-the-world materials and products that are deeply rooted in our long history of innovation.

A Legacy of Innovation

People are often surprised to learn that Corning was owned and run by five generations of the same family. The Houghton multi-generational connection is unusual for large American companies - even more so for a global manufacturer like Corning. The company has been based in Corning, New York since 1868, when Amory Houghton Sr. moved it here from Brooklyn, New York. It was renamed from Brooklyn Flint Glass to Corning Flint Glass Works.

In the late 1870’s, Amory Houghton Jr. was president and had already weathered financial hardships that almost led the young company to bankruptcy. Fortunately, some early glass research paid off in an opportunity to, as we’d say today, disrupt the market for railroad signal lenses. Amory’s brother Charles Houghton, along with Cornell physics professors, William Anthony and George Moler, designed a railroad signal lens with a smooth outer surface that went on to revolutionize railroad safety, and earned the company’s first patent in the process. Railroad signal lenses of the day used ridges to focus the light. The ridges collected grime, obscuring the light, causing dangerous accidents. Corning’s new smooth surface lens was a vast improvement. Corning scientists and engineers followed up on the success of the new lens by reformulating the glass with standard colors and thermal strengthening, ensuring the signal lights were easy to discern from a distance and less likely to crack with temperature swings.

This suite of innovations set the pattern we follow to this day – identify a tough challenge in the market then introduce glass or ceramic formulations that tackle those challenges one by one. The early collaboration between Corning’s researchers and academic scientists later led to the creation of Corning’s research campus in the Corning Valley. One of the first industrial labs in the U.S., what we now call “Sullivan Park,” is alive and going strong today.

It is this early history that set our small town in upstate New York on a path to making important contributions to science, technology, communications and more. From the glass envelope for Thomas Edison's light bulb to ceramic substrates for catalytic converters to the primary mirror for the Hubble telescope to optical fiber, Corning has touched lives throughout the world for generations. In fact, the ability to read this piece online is something we had a hand in, too: Corning has helped enable the digital era we live in.

Corning’s Innovation Path to the Digital Era

In 1933, Corning began production of the large glass bulbs needed for cathode ray tubes (CRTs) going into new test equipment, including experimental television sets. By 1948, the demand for televisions had exploded and Corning began its journey into the television market by making key glass components for companies like RCA and Zenith.

In the 1980's, as the digital era was taking off with the proliferation of personal computers and the introduction of low-loss optical fiber, Corning was again at the forefront of the display market, working with our customers to develop and manufacture glass substrates to enable liquid crystal displays (LCD). To produce the incredibly flat glass needed for flat panel LCDs, Corning introduced the fusion-draw process. Corning was the first manufacturer in the world to form specialty glass in this way. Fusion-draw produces untouched and pristine glass surfaces, eliminating the need for polishing. We later used the same technology to enable laptops, smartphones and other immersive displays, which brings us to the advent of Corning® Gorilla® Glass.

Thirteen Years of Gorilla® Glass Innovation

In 2007, a new challenge was brought to Corning – Steve Jobs was looking for a tough new glass that could withstand lots of abuse for Apple’s soon to be released iPhone. Oh, and by the way, we’d need to be up and running at scale in 6 months. We all now know how ubiquitous the smartphone would become, with a surface that requires incredible clarity and touch sensitivity, but also durability since people touch and swipe their handheld device on average 2,000 times per day. To respond to the challenge, Corning took lessons from glass formulation and strengthening techniques from the 1960’s and developed a new formulation. Our history of research, product experimentation and manufacturing excellence allowed us to “get lucky” again. Over 8 billion devices later, Corning’s invention of this new category of strengthened cover glass has turned out to be quite a good response to that initial challenge. 

As more and more of our lives moved from analog to digital, more and more people looked to their smartphones to help them live their daily life. These handheld computers have become indispensable to consumers around the globe. Early on, we recognized the importance of continuous innovation in our glasses to keep pace with, and in many respects to enable, smartphone design innovations. And as designs evolved, consumers demanded even more from their devices as well. Our improvement efforts focused on scratch resistance with Gorilla® Glass 3. As devices got bigger and thinner and saw more constant use, we shifted our focus to include drop performance as well. Our Gorilla® Glass 5 and Gorilla® Glass 6 innovations pushed the envelope on what was possible on the front, as well as, the backs of phones. Rest assured, our innovations in this space continue — which brings me to an exciting announcement.

Introducing Corning® Gorilla® Glass Victus™

Today I am very pleased to announce, Gorilla® Glass Victus™ — the toughest Gorilla Glass yet, with significant improvement in both drop and scratch performance, for the first time ever in the Gorilla Glass family.

As pioneers and leaders in this industry, with every new Gorilla Glass release, we are always competing with our last flagship glass. For Gorilla Glass Victus, we knew we needed to develop a glass substantially better than Gorilla Glass 6. But given the evolution in handset design and real-world use, what exactly would better mean?

To find the answer to that question, we conducted a worldwide study to learn directly from the consumer about their smartphone experiences. The results were surprising. We have always been told by industry insiders that consumers don’t care about scratches on their smartphones but, the consumer, told us that they do. In fact, when pressed to choose between what is more important, drop performance or scratch resistance, they told us they were both equally important.

We took this challenge back to our technologists with a new goal: invent a glass that dramatically improves both drop and scratch at the same time. And today, Gorilla Glass Victus does exactly that. It’s so superior to any Gorilla Glass we made before, we felt it deserves more than a number – it deserves a new name: Gorilla Glass Victus. The name “Victus” comes from a Latin word meaning “to live” or “to survive.”

I go into more specifics about the glass and ways in which we test in a keynote talk you can see here. The bottom line is consumers wanted more durability and we’ve delivered.

We’ve created something truly unique with Gorilla Glass Victus, and we know that designers and engineers throughout the mobile device ecosystem will utilize this glass to its full potential across their portfolios.

For those of you that think smartphone innovation has plateaued, you need to look no further than the small town of Corning, New York. We’ll continue to be tough and we’ll continue to innovate no matter what the future holds.