Harold M. Spurlin

Harold Morton Spurlin (1905–1992) was an American industrial chemist who worked for the Hercules Powder Company of Wilmington, Delaware, from at least 1929, chiefly in cellulose and polymer research.^[1][2][3][4]

Life

Find a Grave has a memorial for a Harold M. Spurlin (1905–1992) buried in St. Mark's Episcopal Church Cemetery in Perryville, Cecil County, Maryland. It links him to parents Oscar L. Spurlin (1873–1936) and Sara Huiet Spurlin (1884–1968).^[5] His father is buried in Saluda, South Carolina.^[6] Open Library's record of the 1954 edition of Cellulose and Cellulose Derivatives also lists the co-editor as "Spurlin, Harold M., 1905-".^[7]

The obituary of his widow, Mary Anna "Jo" Kintner Spurlin (1920–2018), connects this grave to the chemist. It says she was a 1942 chemistry graduate of Washington College who went to work at the Hercules Powder Company in Wilmington during the war, "where her future husband, Dr. Harold Spurlin was a leading chemical engineer." The couple married in 1944. She was born in Perryville, her interment was to be there, and she was "preceded in death by her husband, Dr. Harold M. Spurlin."^[8] No source seen for this article gives his exact birth and death dates or names the university that granted his doctorate.

Hercules research

Spurlin's earliest patent applications, filed in September 1929 and assigned to Hercules, give his residence as Kenvil, New Jersey.^[4][9] A 1989 business-history paper by Davis Dyer and David B. Sicilia says that after Hercules reorganized its Experiment Station in 1933, the station "boasted several renowned cellulose chemists, including Drs. Emil Ott and Harold Spurlin" by the mid-1930s. According to the paper, Ott, Spurlin and others kept a close watch on European cellulose chemistry and helped the company bring out a quick series of new cellulose products in the mid- and late 1930s. These began with cellulose acetate in 1936 and went on to ethyl cellulose, cellulose acetobutyrate and cellulose acetopropionate.^[1] A 1940s photograph in the Science History Institute's collections shows ethyl cellulose at Hercules's Hopewell, Virginia, plant.^[10]

In the 1954 edition of Cellulose and Cellulose Derivatives he is listed as "Harold M. Spurlin, Ph.D., Technical Assistant to Director, Hercules Experiment Station."^[2] Federal court opinions of 1977 and 1980 refer to a Dr. Spurlin who held the title of Technical Assistant at the Hercules Research Center in the 1960s (see below).^[11][12]

Patents

Google Patents lists 44 US patent documents naming Harold M. Spurlin as inventor. All are assigned to the Hercules Powder Company or its successor, Hercules Inc., and their priority dates run from 1929 to 1969.^[13] Among them:

• US 1,946,338, Tracing paper and method of producing, filed 11 September 1929 and granted 6 February 1934, the earliest of the group.^[4]
• US 1,966,806, Method of producing smokeless powder, filed 17 September 1929 and granted 17 July 1934.^[9]
• US 2,109,934, Method of producing guanidine nitrate, filed 5 April 1935 and issued 1 March 1938.^[14]
• US 2,207,076, Method for the purification of cellulose ethers, filed 30 November 1938 and published 9 July 1940. It describes purifying crude ethyl cellulose by separating it into two liquid phases instead of washing it again and again, and claims this cut treatment from about sixteen hours of washing to about one hour.^[15]
• US 3,203,936, Cross-linking ethylene polymers, with David S. Breslow, filed 15 March 1961 and issued 31 August 1965.^[16]
• Two reverse-osmosis membrane patents: US 3,620,970 (from hydroxyalkyl derivatives of cellulose, with Eugene D. Klug and William L. Young, issued 16 November 1971) and US 3,645,890 (from crystalline polymers of vinyl methyl ether, with Carl A. Lukach, issued 29 February 1972).^[17][18]
• US 3,676,466, Azidoformate-isocyanate compounds, issued 11 July 1972, and US 3,705,123, Polyphase compositions, with Bert H. Mahlman, issued 5 December 1972.^[19][20]

See also Spurlin patents.

Patent appeals and the Hercules–Exxon litigation

Spurlin was a co-applicant in two appeals decided by the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. In Application of Lohr and Spurlin, 317 F.2d 388 (1963), the court upheld the rejection of claims to organic thiophosphate pesticide compounds as obvious over an earlier patent.^[21] In Application of Lukach, Olson and Spurlin, 442 F.2d 967 (1971), it upheld the rejection of claims to ethylene–propylene copolymers, because an earlier application did not adequately describe the claimed invention. That left a Hercules Powder Co. British patent, published in 1960, as a bar.^[22]

In Hercules Inc. v. Exxon Corp., a patent case over ethylene–propylene terpolymer rubbers, the federal district court in Delaware listed "Spurlin (Technical Assistant, Research Center)" among the Hercules research staff who took part in the disputed communications.^[11] Its 1980 decision describes how, in March 1965, a Hercules patent attorney met with "Dr. Spurlin" to start test work for the Patent Office, and Spurlin directed a colleague to run the tests. Exxon argued that an affidavit Spurlin signed on 24 May 1965 was misleading. The court rejected the charge, finding that the affidavit "truthfully reported well-known scientific facts."^[12] The opinions do not give his first name.

Cellulose and Cellulose Derivatives

With Emil Ott and Mildred W. Grafflin, Spurlin edited the second, "completely revised and augmented" edition of Cellulose and Cellulose Derivatives, volume 5 of Interscience's High Polymers series. The title page lists the editors as members of the Research Department of the Hercules Powder Company, and names Ott and Spurlin as co-editors and Grafflin as assistant editor.^[2] The three parts they edited were published from 1954. Two later parts (4 and 5), issued by Wiley-Interscience, were edited by Norbert M. Bikales and Leon Segal.^[7][23] Spurlin also wrote the chapters "Reactivity and Reactions of Cellulose" and "Solubility", and, with Paul M. Doty, "Determination of Molecular Weight and Molecular-Weight Distribution".^[2]

Recognition

The division's list of past winners names "Harold Morton Spurlin, Hercules" as the 1964 recipient of the Anselme Payen Award. The award is given by the American Chemical Society's Cellulose and Renewable Materials Division for work in cellulose chemistry.^[3]