James Gilbert E. Wright (March 25, 1874 – August 20, 1961)[1][unreliable source] was a Scottish-born inventor, researcher and chemical engineer at General Electric who invented Silly Putty in 1943 while looking for a replacement for rubber.
The General Electric Company was under a government contract to create an inexpensive substitute for synthetic rubber for the war effort.
Instead of forming the hard rubber material he was looking for, the compound remained slightly gooey to the touch.
However, it was not a good rubber substitute, so Wright and other GE scientists continued their search.
[2] Among Wright's other inventions for the General Electric Company were a method of restoring shrunken celluloid photographic films to their original condition,[4] and a process of treating metals to protect against oxidation and corrosion.