Gilmore Tilmen Schjeldahl (June 1, 1912 – March 10, 2002) was an American businessman and inventor in plastics, adhesives and circuitry.
Unable to get the material to seal to itself, he and his wife experimented on solutions at home, where they developed a hot knife-sealing process.
The company moved into a shop the next year in Farmington, Minnesota, and eventually produced a variety of polyethylene packaging materials and plastic bag liners.
[6] The company started experimenting with lamination at this time, researching adhesives for a new DuPont polymer called Mylar.
[6] On January 21, 1955, Schjeldahl began making plans for a new company to be located in the basement of the Medical Arts building in Northfield, Minnesota.
The company secured a contract in April 1955 to create atmospheric research balloons made with Mylar polyester film, held together with an adhesive system that Schjeldahl developed.
Eventually the company began developing a line of adhesive tapes for polyester bonding called Schjel-Bond (GT100, GT200, GT300, and GT400).
[citation needed] The G. T. Schjeldahl Company gained national recognition for designing and building Echo I, the first communications satellite.
Schjeldahl resigned as chairman of the board and started Giltech, a company which concerned itself primarily with making bottles through the blow molding process.