John Wesley Hyatt
| John Wesley Hyatt | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 28, 1837 Starkey, New York |
| Died | May 10, 1920 (aged 82) |
| Nationality | American |
| Engineering career | |
| Projects | production of celluloid |
| Awards |
John Scott Medal (1898) Perkin Medal (1914) |
John Wesley Hyatt (November 28, 1837 – May 10, 1920) was an American inventor. He is mainly known for simplifying the production of celluloid, the first industrial plastic. Hyatt, a Perkin Medal recipient, is an inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Hyatt was born in Starkey, New York, and began working as a printer when he was 16. Later, he became an inventor, receiving several hundred patents. Aided by his brother Isaiah, he experimented with Parkesine, a hardened form of nitrocellulose, while researching a substitute for ivory to produce billiard balls. Parkesine had been invented by the English Alexander Parkes in 1862, and is considered the first true plastic, although it was not a success as a commercial or industrial product. Liquid nitrocellulose, or collodion, had been used as early as 1851 by another English inventor, Frederick Scott Archer, in photographic applications; it had also been used extensively as a quick-drying film to protect the fingertips of printers. Hyatt's eventual result was a commercially viable way of producing solid, stable nitrocellulose, which he patented in the United States in 1869 as "Celluloid" (US patent 50359; now a genericized trademark). In 1870 Hyatt formed the Albany Dental Plate Company to produce, among other things, billiard balls, false teeth, and piano keys, Hyatt’s Celluloid Manufacturing Company was established in Albany, New York in 1872 and moved to Newark, New Jersey in 1873.
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