Most mass do n’t live to be 94 . Most multitude do n’t have the National Medal of Technology and Innovation . Most people also do n’t make up , by accident , an extremely useful and widespread super - substance . Harry Coover , who died Saturday , did all these matter .
In what must have been a very messy import of find in 1942 , Dr. Harry Coover of Eastman - Kodak Laboratories found that a message he created - cyanoacrylate - was a low failure . It was not , to his consternation , at all suited for a new precision gun sight as he had hoped - it infuriatingly stick by to everything it touched . So it was forgotten . Six years later , while overseeing an observational newfangled design for airplane canopies , Coover found himself stuck in the same gooey pickle with a familiar foe - cyanacrylate was prove useless as ever . But this time , Coover observe that the stuff mould an incredibly strong adhesiveness without needing rut . Coover and his team tinkered with sticking various objects in their lab together , and realized they had finally stumble upon a use for the madden goop . Coover slap a patent on his discovery , and in 1958 , a full 16 years after he first got stuck , cyanoacrylate was being trade on shelves .
Coover died over the weekend , according to his grandson — but not before racking up a PhD , 460 patents , and a billet in the National Inventors Hall of Fame . Not bad for a bozo who bumble upon his greatest creation . So , the next time you stick together a broken photographic plate ( and not your fingers ) , suspension and thank Dr. Coover ’s serendipity . [ SF Gate ]
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