Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Nathaniel Convers WYETH
The only child of N.C. Wyeth to attend college and to not have a career in art.
Inventor of the plastic soda bottle.
Nathaniel Wyeth, an engineer who invented the plastic soda bottle while other members of his family achieved fame as artists, has died in this coastal town at the age 78.
A resident of the village of Tenants Harbor in Saint George, Wyeth was pronounced dead at the Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Glen Cove on Wednesday night, hospital spokesman Russell Donahue said yesterday. Donahue said he did not know the cause of death.
A service was scheduled for Monday in Kennett Square, Pa. Wyeth also had a home in Chadds Ford, Pa., where his artist relatives gained fame.
Although Wyeth achieved his own reknown within the scientific community during a 40-year career with the Du Pont Co., he once said in a newspaper interview that it was small compared to the fame of his brother, painter Andrew Wyeth, and their artist-illustrator father, the late N.C. Wyeth.
"It bothered me for a while, but then I figured they needed the publicity more than I did to help them move their wares. I'm in the same field as the artists - creativity - but theirs is a glamour one," he told The News Journal in Wilmington in 1980.
Wyeth was best known for developing the polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, bottle, which he invented in the early 1970s. The bottle is used for carbonated beverages, wine, liquor and food because of its light weight and impact resistance. It was patented in 1973, and more than 6 million of the containers are produced annually around the world.
He began his career at Du Pont in Wilmington in 1936 in the company's engineering department and held numerous other positions before being named as the company's first engineering fellow in 1963. In 1975, he became the first senior engineering fellow, the company's highest technical position.
Wyeth invented 25 processes and products that spanned a wide range, including plastics, textile fibers, electronics and mechanical systems.
Throughout his career, Wyeth worked closely with mechanical engineering students engaged in research. After retirement, he continued to lecture on creativity in engineering and served as a consultant to Du Pont and universities.
His honors included the 1981 Society of Plastics Engineers International Award for Outstanding Achievement for the development of the PET bottle. The Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., awarded him an honorary doctorate of engineering in 1982. He was elected to the Plastics Hall of Fame by the Society for Plastics Industry in 1986.
Wyeth also was an accomplished craftsman known for creating unusual and detailed furniture miniatures.
He held a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
He is survived by his wife, Jean; five sons; his brother; three sisters; three stepsons, and a stepdaughter.
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