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Dr. Harry Coover credits much of his success to a concept called 'programmed innovation.' David Grace photo.

Sharon Caskey Hayes: Times-News
Sunday, July 11, 2004

KINGSPORT - Dr. Harry Coover holds 460 patents and numerous awards for his work through the years.

Now 85, he's adding one more accomplishment to the list.

Coover was inducted earlier this year into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for all his discoveries - particularly that of cyanoacrylate adhesive, known as Super Glue.

At his home in Kingsport, Coover recently thumbed through a stack of documents detailing his life's work.

"Anybody's legacy is really determined not by what they say, but by what they do. And what one accomplishes is mostly through other people," Coover said. "I've been fortunate to have very capable people working with me over the years. They were the support team that made these things possible."

Coover began his career in the 1940s at Eastman Kodak Co., in Rochester, N.Y., after earning a doctorate from Cornell University. With war raging in Europe, Coover was told to develop an optically clear plastic to use for precision gunsights.

Coover said he "tried all kinds of things, and then I hit upon cyanoacrylates."

He said cyanoacrylates worked great in reproducing the mold for the gunsights. "The problem was, everything I was working with stuck to everything else. It was just a big pain," Coover said.

Soon, the war ended and the project was terminated, and Coover went on to other research.

Six years later, he was transferred to Kodak's Tennessee plant in Kingsport, and was overseeing a group of young chemists working on a project to develop a stronger, tougher, more heat-resistant acrylate polymer for jet canopies. The young chemists were hitting brick walls when Coover suggested they resurrect his research from Rochester.

Using Coover's work, a young chemist placed a sample of the cyanoacrylate substance between two prisms of an Abbe refractometer to judge the purity of the compound. The prisms stuck together and wouldn't separate - no matter what the chemist tried.

"This was a young Ph.D. He thought he was in big trouble and would lose his job, because a refractometer cost about $700 back then," Coover recalled.

"I went and got the material and started sticking everything in the laboratory together. I realized serendipity gave me a second chance - what we had was a new super glue," he said.

What followed was 10 years of hard work to refine the compound for commercial use.

In 1959, Coover was a guest on the television show "I've Got a Secret," with host Garry Moore.

"My secret was - I was going to lift Garry Moore with one drop of glue," Coover said.

He put one drop of glue in between two steel cylinders and counted to 10. The bonded steel was used to lift Moore several feet off the floor.

"He came down and said, ‘OK Coover. If you have so much confidence in this, get on the other side.' And then they lifted both of us," Coover said.

He said the bonded steel would lift up to 3,000 pounds after just 10 seconds, and would eventually hold at least 5,000 pounds.

"We have pictures at Eastman of the glue lifting cars," he said.

Coover introduced his new super glue to the world during the national television show. A short time later, the compound was developed for consumer use and was given the name, Eastman 910.

"You could count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and it was bonded. That's how it got its name - 910," Coover said.

While much attention was given to the glue's capacity to bond solid materials, one of its more impressive applications came in the medical field.

In the early 1960s, Eastman and Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, formed an agreement to conduct research on the use of cyanoacrylates as adhesive for human tissue.

Coover said the compound demonstrated an excellent capacity to stop bleeding, and during the Vietnam War, he developed disposal cyanoacrylate sprays for use in the battle field.

"If somebody had a chest wound or open wound that was bleeding, the biggest problem they had was stopping the bleeding so they could get the patient back to the hospital. And the consequence was - many of them bled to death. So the medics used the spray, stopped the bleeding, and were able to get the wounded back to the base hospital. And many, many lives were saved," Coover said.

"This was very powerful. That's something I'm very proud of - the number of lives that were saved," he said.

Ironically, the Food & Drug Administration hadn't given approval for the medical use of the compound at that point. But the military used the substance, anyway.

Today, the use of cyanoacrylates for medical purposes is "just now starting to be approved in this country," Coover said.

"That's something that's been very frustrating for me. Other countries like Japan, Germany, England and France saw this research and they got approval years ago for medical applications."

He said the substance has proven valuable in various surgeries. It's been used to seal bleeding ulcers, to seal tooth sockets in dental surgery, to repair soft organs and lung lesions, and to reduce scarring during cosmetic surgery. It's also been used in ophthalmic surgery to seal punctures or lesions in the eyeball, and to reduce postoperative pain following periodontal surgery.

The use of cyanoacrylates as a forensic technique for fingerprints has also become popular worldwide.

Coover said he foresees even greater opportunities for using the glue in medical applications down the road.

"And I'm very proud of that," he said.

Super Glue is just one of Coover's many discoveries. He developed a flame resistant polymer that could be used to make clothing. His research using syn-gas feedstocks led to a process commercialized by Eastman for producing chemicals from coal.

Coover is responsible for advances in the fields of graft polymerization, organophosphorus chemistry, and olefin polymerization.

But this inventor believes some of his most important work isn't an invention at all, but a methodology for management.

Coover calls it "programmed innovation," in which research and development become critical parts of a company's success.

"It's essential that you eliminate all the barriers to innovation and bring the research and development out of the ivory tower and into the business of the business with representation at the highest level in the company," Coover said.

He said everyone in a company should be challenged with innovation. "We don't know where the next idea is going to come from that will be the basis for an important new research project," Coover said.

"The economic viability of both large and small companies really depends on their ability to incorporate new science and technology. The graveyard is full of companies that failed to do that," he said.

He said programmed innovation calls for a "matrix" organization with a maximum of three levels of management below the chief executive officer, instead of an "inefficient bureaucratic structure."

"Companies are still burdened with six, eight, nine levels of management - and half of those guys contribute not a damn thing. There's where the big problem comes in for companies," Coover said.

He said programmed innovation was implemented at Eastman, and from 1980 to 1984 - during the last four years before his retirement from the company - some 320 new products were introduced. That compares with 425 new products during the entire decade of the 1970s.

Meanwhile, Eastman's sales grew from $1.8 billion in 1979 to $2.5 billion in 1984.

Following his retirement as vice president of Eastman Kodak and director of research and development and new venture management at Eastman Chemical Division, Coover formed his own international management consulting practice, advising corporate clients around the world on his programmed innovation methodology.

A year later, he was named president of new business development at Loctite Corp. in Newington, Conn., and implemented his programmed innovation there. Sales at Loctite grew from $230 million in 1985 to more than $400 million in 1988, "after five years of little or no growth," Coover said.

"You can see the tremendous impact on sales," he said.

Coover remained at Loctite for five years, while continuing his international consulting business on the side.

He then served on the board of Reilly Industries in Indianapolis for nine years, bringing his management concepts to yet another business.

He continued his international consulting business, and traveled extensively with his wife of more than 60 years, Muriel.

Coover said he officially retired at the end of last year.

"In the 60-plus years of my professional career, I went from laboratory scientist to executive vice president to chief technical officer to board member to president to international management consultant. And during that career, I have been a champion for ways and means to maximize productivity of inventions and innovations," Coover said.

He's published numerous papers on the subject, and still wants to write a book about it.

"You know there are many books that have been written on management, and I'm afraid most of those are missing the mark. They're lecturing on ways to overcome barriers. Programmed innovation isn't concerned with that at all - it eliminates barriers. There's a real difference there," he said.

"It really disturbs me to look at companies just fading away because they aren't keeping up with new technology and really understanding what the customers' needs are.

"I think programmed innovation - the development and the methodology and the principles - can have a major impact on a company achieving business excellence. I guess that's probably had the biggest impact of all the things I've done," he said.