Coover didn't just invent Super Glue,
but also held the patents to over 460 other inventions.
Coover was attempting to make clear plastic
gun sights to be put on guns used by Allied soldiers in WWII.
This time, when Coover heard of Joyner's“discovery”, he
decided not to abandon it and Super Glue, as a commercial product,
Nine years later, though, it was“rediscovered”, again by accident, this time Coover was supervising a project to try to develop
heat resistant acrylate polymer.
Surprisingly, despite the commercial potential of such a product, Coover abandoned that formulation completely as it obviously wasn't
suitable for his current project, being too sticky.
This time, Coover did not abandoned the cyanoacrylate(Super Glue),
rather, he realized the great potential of a product that would quickly bond to a variety of materials and only needed a little water to activate, which generally is provided in the materials to be bonded themselves.