The first Super Glue was an accidental invention during the World War II. The original cyanoacrylates, the chemical name for the glue, were discovered in 1942 by Dr. Harry Coover in a search for materials to make clear plastic gun sights for the war. One particular formulation he came up with didn’t work well for gun sights, but worked effectively as an extremely quick boding adhesive. However, this material was quickly rejected by American researchers due to being too sticky.
Nine years later, in 1951, now working at Eastman Kodak, Dr. Coover was the supervisor of a project looking at developing a heat resistant acrylate polymer for jet canopies. His colleague, Fred Joyner, at one point used the rediscovered Super Glue and tested its solidity successfully. This time, Coover recognized the its true commercial potential that would quickly bond to a variety of materials and only needed a little water to activate.
The Super Glue was first sold as a commercial product in 1958 by Eastman Kodak and was called “Eastman #910”, re-named “Super Glue” later. By the 1970s, numerous manufactures of cyanoacrylate glues had popped up, with Eastman Kodak, Loctite, and Permabond accounting for around ¾ of all “Super Glue” sales.
In general, the Super Glue was invented by the same people, twice. It didn’t hit the public market until well after World War II had ended. Dr. Coover didn’t just invent Super Glue, but also held the patents to over 460 other inventions. He also developed a unique “programmed innovation” method which he implemented at Kodak and which resulted in a remarkable 320 new products being developed under his supervision while he was at Kodak. During that span, those products helped raise Kodak’s annual revenue from $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion. He later left Kodak and formed a consulting group that would teach businesses his programmed innovation methods.
Summer Seminar 