You can't go shopping at Woolworth's any more. It shut its doors in 1997.
You can't fly on TWA, Pan Am or Eastern Airlines. All three were permanently grounded years ago.
Nobody listens to investment company E.F. Hutton these days because it no longer exists.
You can't hire Arthur Andersen as your accountant. Its work for another defunct company, Enron, ruined its reputation.
You can't order I-beams from Bethlehem Steel.
All those well-known American companies -- and many more like them -- are out of business. Some were victims of changing consumer habits and retail environments. Some bowed to foreign competition and union disputes. Others let down their ethical guard in favor of quick profits.
So how has Corning Inc. survived 160 years -- a milestone it noted this month -- while many other major American corporations have fallen by the wayside?
There are three threads running through the history of the Twin Tiers' largest employer that help explain its longevity:
1. A commitment to product improvements. Early in the 20th century, Corning pioneered ways to make better railroad signal glass. Today it keeps improving its flagship product, liquid crystal display glass.
2. A commitment to improving the manufacturing process. That resulted in new ways of making light bulbs, thermometer glass, television tubes and sheet glass.
3. A commitment to scientific research. Through good times and bad, Corning Inc. has set aside money to find new ways of using glass and glass-ceramic products. As a result, it normally has several new products in the pipeline to replace those that mature.
Its commitment to research and development may have saved the company from financial collapse nearly a decade ago when the optical communications market imploded, slashing Corning's revenue by more than 50 percent.
Much of the revenue lost from sales of optical fiber was eventually replaced by income from sales of glass for liquid crystal displays.
If Corning Inc. had not spent many years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing that flat-panel glass, the product cupboard could have been empty when fiber sales dwindled.
Today, the vast majority of the company's income comes from the liquid crystal display glass business.
It's not that Corning Inc. has never flirted with financial oblivion. In the 19th century, not long after it moved to Corning, the company went bankrupt.
It struggled during the Great Depression, as did most other American companies.
Early in this century, it faced what one market analyst called a "nuclear winter" because it invested too many of its resources to the shaky optical communications business.
Each time, however, it has bounced back because of its commitment to the basic principles that have guided its operation in three different centuries.
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