Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

Gorilla Glass
Jobs became infatuated with different materials the way he did with certain foods. When he went 
back to Apple in 1997 and started work on the iMac, he had embraced what could be done with 
translucent and colored plastic. The next phase was metal. He and Ive replaced the curvy plastic 
PowerBook G3 with the sleek titanium PowerBook G4, which they redesigned two years later in 
aluminum, as if just to demonstrate how much they liked different metals. Then they did an iMac 
and an iPod Nano in anodized aluminum, which meant that the metal had been put in an acid bath 
and electrified so that its surface oxidized. Jobs was told it could not be done in the quantities they 
needed, so he had a factory built in China to handle it. Ive went there, during the SARS epidemic, 
to oversee the process. “I stayed for three months in a dormitory to work on the process,” he 
recalled. “Ruby and others said it would be impossible, but I wanted to do it because Steve and I 
felt that the anodized aluminum had a real integrity to it.”
Next was glass. “After we did metal, I looked at Jony and said that we had to master glass,” 
said Jobs. For the Apple stores, they had created huge windowpanes and glass stairs. For the 
iPhone, the original plan was for it to have a plastic screen, like the iPod. But Jobs decided it 
would feel much more elegant and substantive if the screens were glass. So he set about finding a 
glass that would be strong and resistant to scratches.
The natural place to look was Asia, where the glass for the stores was being made. But Jobs’s 
friend John Seeley Brown, who was on the board of Corning Glass in Upstate New York, told him 
that he should talk to that company’s young and dynamic CEO, Wendell Weeks. So he dialed the 

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main Corning switchboard number and asked to be put through to Weeks. He got an assistant, who 
offered to pass along the message. “No, I’m Steve Jobs,” he replied. “Put me through.” The 
assistant refused. Jobs called Brown and complained that he had been subjected to “typical East 
Coast bullshit.” When Weeks heard that, he called the main Apple switchboard and asked to speak 
to Jobs. He was told to put his request in writing and send it in by fax. When Jobs was told what 
happened, he took a liking to Weeks and invited him to Cupertino.
Jobs described the type of glass Apple wanted for the iPhone, and Weeks told him that Corning 
had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what they dubbed “gorilla 
glass.” It was incredibly strong, but it had never found a market, so Corning quit making it. Jobs 
said he doubted it was good enough, and he started explaining to Weeks how glass was made. 
This amused Weeks, who of course knew more than Jobs about that topic. “Can you shut up,” 
Weeks interjected, “and let me teach you some science?” Jobs was taken aback and fell silent. 
Weeks went to the whiteboard and gave a tutorial on the chemistry, which involved an ion-
exchange process that produced a compression layer on the surface of the glass. This turned Jobs 
around, and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as Corning could make within six months. 
“We don’t have the capacity,” Weeks replied. “None of our plants make the glass now.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored and confident but 
not used to Jobs’s reality distortion field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would 
not overcome engineering challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he 
didn’t accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind 
around it. You can do it.”
As Weeks retold this story, he shook his head in astonishment. “We did it in under six months,” 
he said. “We produced a glass that had never been made.” Corning’s facility in Harrisburg, 
Kentucky, which had been making LCD displays, was converted almost overnight to make gorilla 
glass full-time. “We put our best scientists and engineers on it, and we just made it work.” In his 
airy office, Weeks has just one framed memento on display. It’s a message Jobs sent the day the 
iPhone came out: “We couldn’t have done it without you.”