US Patent Issued to Corning on July 15 for "System and methods for processing an optical fiber preform" (North Carolina, South Carolina Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,358,830, issued on July 15, was assigned to Corning Inc. (Corning, N.Y.).

"System and methods for processing an optical fiber preform" was invented by Raymond David Groh (Wilmington, N.C.), Joseph Leroy Morse (Little River, S.C.), Bradley Kent Shepard (Wilmington, N.C.), Ian Anthony Smith (Kure Beach, N.C.) and Eric Wade Thornton (Wilmington, N.C.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system and methods are described herein for preheating a preform in a preheater furnace and then transferring the preheated preform to a consolidation furnace for chemical treatment and sintering the preform into a clear glass which can be drawn into optical fib...