Gore & Associates, the manufacturing company founded by his parents, he was tasked with creating an inexpensive form of plumber’s tape for a client. Mr. Gore sought to make more efficient use of the material by stretching it, not unlike Silly Putty. But each time he heated and stretched a rod of PTFE in his lab, it broke in two. “So I decided to give one of these rods a huge stretch, fast — a jerk. I gave it a huge jerk and it stretched 1,000 percent.

Source: New York Times September 25, 2020 18:54 UTC