The dream itself first started taking shape from 1945 to 1957, when Bill worked on a task force in the research labs of E.I. Du Pont de Nemours. As Bill remembers it, the taskforce approach to problem-solving had just been introduced at Du Pont. It had become increasingly popular in scientific research after prototype groups had proven their effectiveness during World War II. Bill's group, which at times included 20 researchers from various scientific disciplines, was intent on fabricating useful products from a polymer Du Pont had patented in 1937 called polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE. Years later, consumers would know PTFE as "Teflon," of nonstick-frying fame.
At the time, though, PTFE was little more than a puzzle. It had all the markings of a super-substance: It was strong, impervious to chemical solvents, abrasion-resistant, stable over a wide range of temperatures, and a nearly perfect electrical insulator. But in polymer form, PTFE could be neither injection-molded nor extruded by melt-processing techniques, the two traditional methods of fashioning, say, a plastic bowl. It could be "ram" extruded, a process of taking a lump of PTFE, a battering ram of some sort, and then smashing the PTFE through an orifice. Tape and tubing could be made that way, but little else. "The task force," Bill says, "was exciting, challenging, and loads of fun. Besides, we worked like Trojans. I began to wonder why entire companies couldn't be run the same way."
But even as Bill's group burned the midnight oil, another task force succeeded in creating a thermoplastic copolymer of PTFE that could be conventionally fabricated. "Du Pont felt that was good enough," Bill says, "and our group was dissolved. Everybody went back to their departments." Gore did, too, but nights, holidays, and weekends, he went to his basement. "I had a pretty good shop set up," he says, "so I started fooling around with polymer PTFE down there."
Bill continued to pursue his career at Du Pont and tinker in the basement for a year or so. One night in the fall of 1957, Bob Gore, a junior studying chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, dropped in on his father in the basement lab. He was surprised when his father launched into a long lecture on PTFE. Not only did Bill recite the litany of qualities he considered superior to those of the thermoplastic copolymer, but he also related their importance to another technological revolution that was unfolding at an astonishing pace -- computers.
Ever since he first entered a few numbers into a computer named Einiac, a forerunner of Univac, Bill had followed the evolution of computers and transistors with growing excitement. He felt that some of PTFE's characteristics made it an ideal insulator for electrical wires in computers. It would make them easier to build, he said, and would ultimately increase their efficiency. And that, he concluded, could mean a very profitable market.
Bill explained that he had tried various ways to make a PTFE coating but had failed. He held up an aborted section of ribbon cable and pointed out where his attempts had broken down. "Then I noticed some sealant tape made by the 3M company," Bob says. "Dad had said it was ram-extruded PTFE so I asked him: 'Why don't you try this tape?' Dad said that would mean laminating the wires between two sections of tape and everybody knew you couldn't bond PTFE to itself. I went to bed."
As near as Bob can recall, it was around 4 a.m. when his father shook him awake. "I really didn't grasp what he was talking about," Bob says, "except I knew my father was very excited. I was sitting on the edge of my bed blinking at him, and he was waving this small piece of cable around saying: 'It works. It works."
"That's right," Bill says, "I stayed up all night to try out his suggestion. My son proved everybody wrong. But I really think it was 6 a.m. Bob used to sleep late." The next night, father and son returned to the lab and made ribbon cable "just as beautiful as can be."
During the next four months, Bill Gore tried to persuade Du Pont to take on the PTFE ribbon cable as a new product. "By that time in my career," he says, "I knew people who could make a decision. But it came through loud and clear that Du Pont regarded itself as a supplier of plastic raw materials and not as a fabricator." Soon after he learned of the company's decision, Bill and Vieve talked about starting their own wire and cable business. Bill said that if they mortgaged their house and took $4,000 from savings, they could make a go of it for two years. If they weren't successful by then, he said, he could probably get his job back at Du Pont or possibly teach at a university.
On January 1, 1958, their 23rd wedding anniversary, Bill and Vieve started another partnership."All of our friends told us not to do it," Vieve Gore says, "and that's a very difficult thing. But this man of mine had it in his head. He just had to do it. We had that basement festooned with lights. We put drill holes in the floor and drill holes in the walls. It's hard to describe what it's like to bring your husband home and turn him loose."
When Bill Gore left Du Pont, he was 45 years old with five children to support. He left behind a career that spanned 17 years, a good salary, and security. But he also took a lot with him. During the next 24 years, virtually every new product Gore & Associates introduced was based on the PTFE polymer, bought from Du Pont, that Bill first encountered on the task force. And, just as important, Gore set out to recreate in his own company the sense of excited commitment, personal fulfillment, and self-direction that he had experienced on the Du Pont task force. "From the very beginning," Bill says, "we were using the principles of the lattice. After all, there was just Vieve and me, and we had been using them for years."
