The inventor of Corning WareÔ was Dr. S. Donald Stookey, however, the discovery was an accident. While in lab one day, Dr. Stookey overheated a piece of Fotoform glass by accident. When the structure of the glass was examined he noticed that the glass had started to take on a crystalline structure similar to that of ceramics. So Dr. Stookey played around with different glass mixtures. He discovered that if certain nucleating agents were added to the glass mixture, he could make fine-grained ceramic objects from glass objects formed by traditional methods by high temperature heat treatment. Due to the high thermal stress tolerance of the material, Corning, Inc. was able to produce a cookware made out of a glass-ceramic, and in 1958 Corning WareÔ was born.