Industry: The Material with 33,000 Uses

• Share

Moviegoers chuckled some years ago when Alec Guinness, as The Man in the White Suit, invented an indestructible garment, only to be frustrated by businessmen shocked at its non-obsolescence. The indestructible suit is still a fantasy, but something almost as good is on the way. This one will not stretch or shrink, is impervious to stains and moths, goes from soaking wet to bone-dry in seconds, holds a press and defies wrinkles. It will be made of fiber glass, a versatile material that is beginning to be used in hundreds of consumer items after years of narrow specialization.

From the Phoenicians. Filaments spun from hot silica sand were used to make ornaments 3,000 years ago by the Phoenicians, but the modern fiber glass industry is only 25 years old. In that scant time, it has grown into a $340 million business. Almost 80% of its sales are made by Owens-Corning, a company controlled jointly by Owens-Illinois and Corning Glass. Owens-Corning did much of the original research on commercial glass fibers, owns the well-known Fiberglas trademark. Under a 1949 consent decree, the company agreed to release some patents and license others. Fiber glass, as a result, is now produced by Johns-Manville, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and several other companies.

Fiber glass used as insulation still accounts for 70% of sales, but the development of other products has been stepped up by the invention of a double-nozzle spray gun that shoots fiber and liquid resin simultaneously, thus creating an easy and inexpensive method of spraying fiber glass onto molds. One new product, in fact, almost wrecked the industry. Boats made of plastic reinforced with fiber glass became a quick success, and before long, dozens of boat companies were building them. The supply of fiber glass got so scarce that it had to be allocated while the firms rushed new production facilities. Unfortunately, many of the boat builders were inexperienced and undercapitalized; when they floundered, the fiber glass companies were left with excess capacity, were forced to make price cuts. This year, however, the rising demand for fiber glass in new products has finally led to price increases. Owens-Corning's first-half earnings of $8.2 million on sales of $139 million, announced this week, are 62% better than last year.

Changing the Sea. So far, researchers have found 33,000 ways in which fiber glass could replace steel, aluminum, wood or cloth. Fiber glass now goes into ladders and luggage, pipes and Polaris missiles, building sidings and shotguns. Some manufacturers are developing it for dresses, and the Canadians are making fiber glass igloos for north woods sportsmen. Automobile bodies, when runs are limited to 50,000 cars of a specialized model, can be made more economically using fiber glass instead of steel. Fiber glass makers hope eventually to replace steel or nylon cord in tires, and thereby take over a $400 million-a-year business. There are signs that fiber glass may even become a wonder worker: a desalinization technique is being tested in which sea water is run through an inexpensive membranous fiber glass pipe, which allows the fresh water to pass through but retains the salt.