Encyclopedia > Waldo Semon

Article Content

Waldo Semon

Waldo Lonsbury Semon (September 10, 1898-May 26, 1999) was a renowned American inventor born in Demopolis, Alabama.

Semon put his name into the history books for inventing vinyl, the world's second most used plastic. Semon also devised the formula for bubble gum, which he patented along with vinyl in 1926. Semon found the formula for vinyl by mixing a few synthetic polymers, and the result was a substance that was elastic, but wasn't adhesive. In all, Semon held 116 patents, and was inducted into the Invention Hall of Fame in 1995 at age 97.

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!

Featured Article

Monty Woolley

... Woolley was a professor and lecturer at Yale University (one of his students was Thornton Wilder) who began acting on Broadway in 1936. He was typecast as the ...