In 2011, a Corning researcher named Terry Ott faced a problem that nobody else had needed to solve in the company’s 160-year history: how to make sheets of glass that could be rolled onto spools.
The way Corning solved the problem of mass-producing Willow helps illustrate the extent to which technological innovation depends on close connections between R&D and manufacturing.
Chowdhury says the first devices that use Willow glass will appear in 2013.