Abstract
MR. JOHN W. HYATT, of Newark, New Jersey, whose death is reported at the age of eighty-two, was the inventor of celluloid. He was a printer by trade, and was using collodion in the course of his work when he accidentally overturned a bottle, and the idea of celluloid came to him from watching the collodion solidify. He took out 250 patents in all, a large majority of which had an important bearing on manufactures. They included a billiard-ball composition, a roller bearing, a system of purifying water for domestic use, a sewing machine capable of sewing fifty rows of lock-stitches at once, a machine for extracting juice from sugar cane, and a new method of solidifying American hardwoods. In 1914 Mr. Hyatt was awarded the Perkin medal of the New York Society of Chemical Industry.
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[Obituaries]. Nature 105, 462 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105462a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105462a0