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Corning Incorporated is an American manufacturer of glass, ceramics, and related materials, primarily for industrial and scientific applications. The company was known as Corning Glass Works until 1989, when it changed its name to Corning Incorporated.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Corning, Form S-3/A, Filing Date Jan 18, 1994 )〕 In 1998, Corning divested itself of its consumer lines of CorningWare and Corelle tableware and Pyrex cookware selling them to World Kitchen, but still holds an interest of about 8%. , Corning had five major business sectors: Display Technologies, Environmental Technologies, Life Sciences, Optical Communications, and Specialty Materials. Corning is involved in two joint ventures: Dow Corning and Pittsburgh Corning. Quest Diagnostics and Covance were spun off from Corning in 1996.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Corning, Form 8-K, Current Report, Filing Date Jan 13, 1997 )〕 ==History== 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, New York, and operated as the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. The company moved again to its ultimate home and namesake, the city of Corning, New York, in 1868 under leadership of the founder's son, Amory Houghton, Jr. Over 147 years later, Corning continues to maintain its world headquarters at Corning, N.Y. The firm also established one of the first industrial research labs there in 1908. It continues to expand the nearby research and development facility, as well as operations associated with catalytic converters and diesel engine filter product lines. Corning has a long history of community development and has assured community leaders that it intends to remain headquartered in its small upstate New York hometown. The California Institute of Technology's 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 partnership with Owens-Illinois, which formed the company known today as Owens Corning. Owens Corning was spun off as a separate company in 1938. 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 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 Blacksburg, Virginia facility.〔 Corning developed it as an alternative to laminated windshields with the intention of becoming an automotive industry supplier.〔 The new 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 the fall of 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.〔http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/pl/13382473/13382475/309393a76c9c7ace561fb1692e6bace7〕 Company profits soared in the late 1990s during the dot-com boom, and Corning expanded its fiber operations significantly with several new plants. The company also entered the photonics market, investing heavily with the intent of becoming the leading provider of complete fiber-optic systems. Failure to succeed in photonics and the collapse in 2000 of the dot-com market had a major impact on the company, and Corning stock plummeted to $1 per share. However, the company had posted five straight years of improving financial performance. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Corning Inc.」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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