Corning trade-secret manufacturing culture

Highest-security site Tom has ever entered (NDAs, no cameras, Corning takes/reviews/sends pictures). Inbred ceramics workforce that moves to Alfred University in retirement. Two 1970s product lines: incandescent light bulb envelopes and TV cathode ray tubes. Losing CRT business spawned new businesses including LCD substrate glass.

But there are some very high-value-added glasses. Corning used to have very close ties to this department, but has even closer ties to Alfred University, which is the New York State College of Ceramics — the best glass technology program. Corning had a whole business in television sets. The old cathode ray tubes — making this blown glass with a slightly curved surface into a steel mold was a technology that Corning perfected, the technology of blowing that glass into a mold and doing it cheaper, more uniformly, than anyone else in the world. Corning is sort of a trade secret company — they don't patent a lot, they just make it. Let me tell you, I can't think of any other company I've ever been in where it was harder to get through the door than the security at Corning. Not only in terms of signing non-disclosures, but you can't bring a camera. If you needed pictures, they would take the pictures, they would review the pictures, and then they would send you the pictures afterwards.