Harry Coover Super Glue Inventor Dead at 94

The inventor of Super Glue has died. Harry Wesley Coover Jr. died this weekend at the age of 94.

Coover was working for Tennessee Eastman Company, a division of Eastman Kodak, when an accident helped lead to the popular adhesive being discovered, according to his grandson, Adam Paul of South Carolina. An assistant was distressed that some brand new refractometer prisms were ruined when they were glued together by the substance.

In 1951, Coover and another researcher recognized the potential for the strong adhesive, and it was first sold in 1958, according to the Super Glue Corp.’s website.

Cyanoacrylate, the chemical name for the glue, was first uncovered in 1942 in a search for materials to make clear plastic gun sights for World War II. But the compound stuck to everything, which is why it was rejected by researchers, the website said.

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