W. L. Gore & Associates

W. L. Gore & Associates is an American multinational manufacturing company that specialises in products derived from fluoropolymers. It is a privately held corporation headquartered in Newark, Delaware, and is best known as the developer of the waterproof, breathable Gore-Tex fabrics. Wilbert (Bill) Gore and his wife Genevieve (Vieve) founded it in 1958 after Bill Gore had spent sixteen years at DuPont, including work on fluoropolymer research. Working in their basement, he developed a process for insulating parallel electrical wires with polytetrafluoroethylene, which led to the Multi-Tet ribbon cable used in computers and communications equipment, and a method suggested by his son Robert W. Gore produced the company's first patent. In 1969 Robert Gore found that the polymer could be stretched into a microporous material, named Gore-Tex expanded PTFE, which today accounts for most of the company's products. It appears in this atlas because the engineer and inventor Bill Gore founded it.