This contribution looks back at the papers published fifty years ago by Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, which are today regarded as marking the coming-to-be of the Weinberg-Salam model of electroweak interactions. Despite their present fame, at the time of their publication the papers went largely unnoticed. Reconstructing the historical context from which they emerged will show how, against the traditional image of theoretical physicists as “lone geniuses,” the Weinberg-Salam model actually came to be thanks to the interplay of many different actors and ideas.