Silly Science

The science behind Silly Putty is complicated, and so is its history. While another scientist is often credited for the invention, Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Earl L. Warrick played a key role in its discovery.

In the 1940s, Warrick (ENG 1933, 1934, 1943) worked as a scientist for Dow Corning Chemical. He was based out of the Mellon Institute, which trained hundreds of scientists in industrial research and development.

Warrick specialized in silicone polymers. His work was part of the U.S. Synthetic Rubber Program, which operated from 1939 to 1945 as a way to produce material in large quantities to meet the wartime needs of the U.S. and its allies.

Warrick and his colleagues studied ways to combine natural and manmade materials to improve the properties of polymers so they could be used in commercial ways. Through the program, he and colleague Rob Roy McGregor invented the first commercially viable silicone rubber, which is now used in things like automotive tubing and underwater masks.

They also experimented with ways to make polydimethylsiloxane fluids more viscous, one of which was adding boric acid. The result did not create a silicon rubber, but it did create a polymer that bounced and stretched farther than natural rubber.

In a 1986 interview with the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, Warrick said: “It behaved like a rubber. It bounced and you could mold it like a putty. We didn't know what to do with it, really. We made a lot of it and just kept it on the shelf.”

In his memoir, “Forty Years of Firsts: The Recollections of a Dow Corning Pioneer,” he added that he and McGregor “would astound visitors by bouncing it off the ceilings and walls of our laboratories.”

On March 30, 1943, the pair filed a patent for “Treating Dimethyl Silicone Polymer with Boric Oxide.” They were awarded U.S. Patent Number 2,431,878 on Dec. 2, 1947.

Around the same time, James Wright, a chemist at General Electric, developed a similar stretchy synthetic polymer that bounced 25 percent higher than rubber. He applied for a patent in 1944.

While the credit for Silly Putty has gone to Wright, Warrick claimed the credit for himself. In a 2002 obituary, his daughter Cathy said that he found the controversy about the true inventor amusing.