Super Glue inventor dies aged 94

Harry Wesley Coover Jr created the glue by accident while working for Tennessee Eastman Company

Harry Wesley Coover Jr, known as the inventor of Super Glue, has died at his home in Kingsport, Tennessee, aged 94.

Coover was working for Tennessee Eastman Company when an accident resulted in the creation of cyanoacrylate better known as Super Glue according to his grandson, Adam Paul of South Carolina. An assistant was distressed that some new refractometer prisms were ruined when they were glued together, marking the invention of the popular adhesive.

The US president, Barack Obama, honoured Coover in 2010 with the National Medal of Science.

Coover was born in Newark, Delaware. He received a degree in chemistry from Hobart College in New York before getting a master's degree and PhD from Cornell.

He worked his way up to become vice president of the chemical division for development at Eastman Kodak. Coover and the team of chemists he worked with became prolific patent holders, achieving more than 460. The work included polymers, organophosphate chemistry, the gasification of coal and of course, cyanoacrylate.

Coover also had a part in early US television history, appearing with Garry Moore on the game show I've Got a Secret. Moore, the show's host, and Coover were hung in the air on bars that were stuck to metal supports with a single drop of his glue during a live television broadcast.

The Industrial Research Institute, for which he served as president in 1982, honoured Coover with a gold medal and the US Patent Office inducted him into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, in 2004.


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