Harry Coover was the accidental inventor of the household staple Super Glue. In fact he discovered the adhesive twice, but realised its potential only the second time he came across it.
Harry Wesley Coover Jr was born in 1917, in Newark, Delaware. He studied chemistry at Hobart College and later completed a master’s and a PhD in the same subject at Cornell University.
Coover was working as a young chemist for Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, during the Second World War when he first came across Super Glue. He was attempting to develop a transparent plastic for precision gun sights. One of the materials he was testing, cyanoacrylate, caused a number of problems. It was very difficult to test as it stuck to everything it touched. After a few abortive attempts to put the compound into moulds, Coover eventually gave up on it.
In 1951 he was working at Eastman Kodak’s laboratory in Tennessee, as part of a team testing compounds to find a heat-resistant polymer for use in aircraft cockpits. He remembered cyanoacrylate from his earlier work and suggested that they try it. When a researcher destroyed an expensive piece of optical equipment by accidentally bonding its lenses with a drop of cyanoacrylate, Coover realised its potential. “It suddenly struck me that what we had was not a casting material but a super glue,” he said in an interview in 2005.
Eastman Kodak began marketing the adhesive as Eastman 910 in 1958. Coover appeared on the television show I’ve Got a Secret to demonstrate the product. He glued together two metal parts and held on to the lower while it was lifted into the air. When he was lowered down, the presenter Barry Moore suggested they both try together. The glue held as the two men dangled in the air on live television.
Advertisement
Eastman 910 was soon being used in a variety of ways, but it quickly became known for its medical applications. It has been used for everything from surgery to glueing fractures. It is also used for fingerprinting by forensic scientists, for protecting climbers’ fingertips and for all manner of repair jobs, from windscreens to laddered tights.
However, the glue only really became a commercial success after the patents had expired and several other companies began developing their own versions. Coover remained proud of his invention, however, especially its medical applications in the Vietnam War, when many medics carried a spray version of the glue to close wounds quickly. “There are lots of soldiers who would have bled to death,” he said.
Coover worked for Eastman Kodak until he retired as vice president of the chemicals division for development in 1984. He held more than 460 patents.
His wife predeceased him and he is survived by a daughter and two sons.
Harry Coover Jr, inventor of Super Glue, was born on March 6, 1917. He died on March 26, 2011, aged 94