The company’s founder, engineer Gaston Glock, had no experience with firearm design or manufacture at the time their first pistol, the Glock 17, was being prototyped. Glock did, however, have extensive experience in advanced synthetic polymers, knowledge of which was instrumental in the company’s design of the first commercially successful line of pistols with a polymer frame. Glock introduced ferritic nitrocarburizing into the firearms industry as an anti-corrosion surface treatment for metal gun parts.