CNN) -- Harry Wesley Coover, best-known as the inventor of Super Glue, has died at his home in Kingsport, Tennessee, a funeral home there said Sunday. He was 94.
The cause of death was congestive heart failure.
Coover got the idea for Super Glue during a lab accident while working for Eastman Kodak, said Hamlett-Dobson Funeral Homes.
He was studying compounds for use in optically perfect gun sights and impact-resistant jet canopies when an assistant complained that new refractometer prisms were wrecked because they got glued together, according to the funeral home.
In fact, cyanoacrylate -- the chemical name for the glue -- was rejected by researchers at first because it bound everything together.
But Coover saw its potential.
The glue was first sold as a commercial product in 1958, according to the Super Glue Corp.'s website.
It has since become synonymous with curiously powerful adhesives. Coover was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation last year for his work.
He is survived by two sons, a daughter and four grandchildren.
You might think i'm not serious with this post, but I use super glue all the fucking time, its the single greatest pattern making tool i use. He will be missed, but his invention will live on forever.
4 comments:
It works awesome for gluing papercuts too. No adhesive bandage will stay on through water, soap, oil, gasoline, dirt, diesel fuel and more soap. Superglue don't give a shit though.
plus how else are you gonna seal up gashes on your hands with no band aids and then keep working?
you could go to the e.r. where they call it "surgical glue" i guess
at it stongest when the glue layer is thinnest, well mated surfaces prevent the crack propogation.
It's great for gluing skin, but not for much of anything else.
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