How a small observation became a big business

The Air Force had awarded a number of contracts to schools and laboratories (including mine) to research the properties of titanium alloys. After six months, all contractors were summoned to a meeting to present and compare results. Every research team had obtained their experimental materials from a different source, meaning they’d been working with specimens of different histories and levels of impurities. Thus, the experiments taken as a group had too many variables to be scientifically valid. The process had made the results meaningless.

I realized that to advance technology there had to be consistent materials across all the schools and laboratories – “pedigreed” materials with identical properties. I decided to become the supplier of those materials. Instead of competing for contracts from the Air Force, I’d get business with everyone who won those contracts.