Forged by war

A man born in a log cabin in Danville, Kentucky, had his life shaped, and made his fortune, through war. He went on to found a company that produced a chemical whose first - and at the time, possibly only - use was in war. That chemical has become perhaps the most important and ubiquitous material in the optical industry worldwide.

The man was John Baptiste Ford (1811-1903). His mother was the daughter of a French immigrant who fought in the American War of Independence. His father joined the Kentucky Homespun Volunteer Regiment to fight the British at New Orleans in the War of 1812 and never returned, so Ford never properly knew him. Apprenticed to a saddle-maker at the age of 12, he ran away two years later to Grenville, Indiana. There, in 1831, he married Mary Bower who taught him to read and write. They opened a dry goods store, then a saddler shop and a flour mill.