Owens Corning Records, 1938-Present
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The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections The University of Toledo Finding Aid Owens Corning Records, 1938-Present MSS-222 Size: 220 linear feet Provenance: On deposit from Owens Corning through Bill Hamilton Access: Open Related Collections: Owens-Illinois, Inc., Company Records, MSS-200, Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company Records, MSS-066 Collection Summary: Fiberglass manufacturer, est. 1938 The records of Owens Corning range from the patent for the method and apparatus for spinning glass in 1925 to the Owens Corning “Winning by design” calendar of 2010. The records offer an array of research possibilities and provide history and insight into the intricacies of a complex company from its inception to it most recent achievements. Major figures in the collection include Harold Boeschenstein, William Boeschenstein, Amory Haughton, General Lauris Norstad, and Games Slayter, among others. There are technical files that offer a glimpse into the minds of inventors, correspondence files signed by U.S. presidents, artifacts from the 1939 New York World’s Fair exhibit, and much more. Subject(s): Business and Commerce, Glass Industry Copyright: The literary rights to this collection are assumed to rest with the person(s) responsible for the production of the particular items within the collection, or with their heirs or assigns. Researchers bear full legal responsibility for the acquisition to publish from any part of said collection per Title 17, United States Code. The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections may reserve the right to intervene as intermediary at its own discretion. Completed by: Supervised by Kimberly Brownlee, Manuscripts Librarian. Timothy Fritz, Tamara Jones, Bradley Sommer, Zachary Dehm, and Julia Dietz, October 26, 2011; updated by Tamara Jones, January, April, August, and September 2013, and April 2014; last updated: November 2016 Owens Corning Records, 1938-Present Historical Sketch The story of Owens Corning began with the twin blows of Prohibition and the Great Depression. Both had a huge effect on glass production. Because the selling of alcohol was suddenly illegal, Owens-Illinois, the largest producers of glass bottles in the country, suddenly found that there was no market for a large share of their products. In addition, the Depression reduced overall demand for bottles. The situation was dire enough that Owens-Illinois simply turned off the glass furnaces in some of their factories. The company sought to diversify its product line, and began looking for other uses for glass. One such use was architectural glass block. Another was glass fibers, a curiosity which the Libbey Glass Company had used to create a dress for the Columbian Exposition in 1893. In 1931, Games Slayter, a consulting engineer, was introduced to William Levis, president of Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Slayter had invented a method for blowing mineral wool insulation into houses, and when C.B. Belknap, vice president of Owens-Illinois, learned of this invention, he introduced Slayter to Levis. Looking for ways to use glass in products other than containers, Levis originally hired Slayter to develop architectural glass block at the Alton, Illinois plant. One day Slayter happened to walk past a glass-melting furnace and noticed some molten glass being blown through the “glory hole” that workers used to observe the glass. The gasses escaping the hole had blown the liquid glass into fibers, which Slayter felt could make good filtration media. Using a machine originally used for making milk bottle glass, the company began producing coarse fibers that led to the production of the Dust-Stop air filter – the first commercial fiberglass product. This filter was successful enough to compete with the steel filters then on the market, but creating glass fibers for insulation purposes continued to elude O-I personnel. The experiments eventually moved from the Alton plant to a plant in Columbus, Ohio. The solution for producing glass fiber insulation commercially finally came in 1932, when Dale Kleist, a college student working at O-I, was attempting to seal glass blocks. He substituted a glass rod for the bronze rod in the metal layer gun he had been using to weld the pieces of glass block together, but the gun produced fine fibers instead of spraying the glass as intended. John (Jack) Thomas, an O-I employee who served as Slayter’s research assistant, noticed the fibers and realized they represented the type of insulation-quality fibers that Slayter had been seeking. This material proved superior to the rock wool insulation being used at the time and was also cheaper to manufacture. The discovery was not an immediate success, however, and lost money in addition to disrupting bottle production at the factory. Nevertheless, Thomas and Kleist filed the initial patent application for glass wool manufacture in 1935. During this time, Corning Glass, which had also experimented with glass fiber technology, became interested in working with O-I. O-I, in turn, realized the potential of using Corning’s own glass knowledge. In 1935, the two companies agreed to pool their resources and work together on fiber glass development. The following year, the word “Fiberglas” with a single “s” was trademarked by Owens-Illinois. By 1938, however, it was clear that Fiberglas was still not financial viable. On October 31 of that year, O-I and Corning Glass spun off the fiberglass division and created a new company, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation (hereafter referred to as “Owens-Corning”), with Games Slayter serving as vice president of Research & Development. Owens-Illinois vice president and general manager Harold Boeschenstein – who had taken an immediate interest in the fiberglass experiments – became president of Owens-Corning when it was spun off in 1938. In its first full 2 Owens Corning Records, 1938-Present year of operation, the company managed to cut loses while totaling sales of $3,800,000. By the end of the year, the company employed 1,080 people. The fortunes of Owens-Corning improved considerably during World War II. As traditional materials became scarce, Fiberglas proved to be an effective substitute and was used not only as an insulator but also as gauze, reinforcement material for self-sealing fuel tanks, and body armor. The U.S. Air Force used Fiberglas as insulation for aircraft cabins, electric cables, and propeller hubs. Sales continued to rise, as did the number of employees; throughout World War II, Owens- Corning had the highest wartime employment of any U.S. company with 6,390 people. The company also had the highest wartime sales, at $58,499,000. In 1942, a new engineering group was established in Toledo to design plant buildings and additions required by the war effort. Two years later, the first prototype boat hull made of Fiberglas Reinforced Plastic (FRP) was completed and in 1945, Owens-Corning worked with William Stout to develop the Stout-Scarab automobile, which had an FRP body. In May of that year, the U.S. Navy asked Owens-Corning to supply a million pounds of superfine “A” fibers a month to replace kapok as the buoyancy material in life jackets, for the planned seaborne invasion of Japan. The end of the war meant that Owens-Corning needed to find new uses for their product. In 1946, the company began using Fiberglas in fabrics and draperies as well as marketing fishing rods, serving trays, and pleasure boats made with FRP. Sales dropped to $32.2 million that year, down from the company’s wartime high, but far from poor. Owens-Corning’s success continued into the late 1940s, but the company soon ran into trouble. In 1947, the federal government initiated an antitrust lawsuit, alleging an unlawful monopoly of the fiberglass industry. The lawsuit was finally settled in 1949 under pressure on both parties from the Toledo federal court. As part of the settlement, Owens-Corning agreed to make all of their patents filed before 1938 available and to license post-1938 patents at reasonable fees. Harold Boeschenstein was noted as saying, “if you succeed you are called a monopoly, but if you fall on your face no one says anything about it.” The 1950s were marked by continuing experimentation with FRP and improved quality insulation. In 1953, both General Motors and Kaiser-Willys debuted cars with bodies made entirely of FRP: the Chevrolet Corvette and the Kaiser-Darrin, respectively. In 1954, a machine at the Newark, Ohio plant was fitted with rotary fiberizers for producing centrifugally spun fiber glass wool. Two years later, the same machine was fitted with a new fiberizer and produced even better fibers. This new process was dubbed the AF (“all fiber”) process as a result. In order to distinguish AF process insulation from other products, red dye was added to the wool binder, which colored the product pink. Owens-Corning remains famous for its PINK® insulation to this day. In 1955, the company introduced Perma-Ply roofing material for Built Up Roof (BUR) insulation covering. 1955 also saw the former H.C. Penny farm, near Granville, Ohio, purchased as a site for a research and testing facility. The Newark Pioneering Laboratory, under Games Slayter, moved into the former dairy barns on the Penny site. New buildings were added and adjacent lands were purchased as they became available. The 1950s also saw expansion. Fiberglas Canada, established in 1939, was the first of Owens- Corning’s international operations, but the company did not begin expanding in earnest until several years later. Owens-Corning first partnered with Asahi Glass in Japan, followed by partnerships with Vitro, S.A. (Mexico) and a joint venture in Australia. In 1952, Owens-Corning 3 Owens Corning Records, 1938-Present became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. The shares were distributed, a third each, to Owens-Illinois, Corning Glass, and the public.