Hyatt, John Wesley (1837-1920)

US inventor who in 1869 invented celluloid, the first artificial plastic, intended as a substitute for ivory. It became popular for making a wide range of products, from shirt collars and combs to toys and babies' rattles, and is still used in the manufacture of table-tennis balls.

Hyatt was born in Starkey, New York, and worked in Illinois as a printer. In the early 1860s, the New York company of Phelan and Collender offered a prize of $10,000 for a satisfactory substitute for ivory for making billiard balls. Using pyroxylin, a partly nitrated cellulose, Hyatt developed celluloid (the US trade name: it was called Xylonite in Britain). Although celluloid did come to be used for billiard balls, Hyatt was never awarded the prize money. He continued to patent his inventions - more than 200 of them, including roller bearings and a multiple-stitch sewing machine.

Celluloid consisted of a mouldable mixture of nitrated cellulose and camphor. Its chief disadvantage was its flammability. Celluloid was also used as a substrate for photographic film and as the filling in sandwich-type safety glass for car windscreens. It has largely been superseded by other synthetic materials.