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Edward Goodrich Acheson, circa 1912.
Credit: Courtesy of The Electrochemical Society www.electrochem.org.
Born in Washington, PA, Edward Goodrich Acheson (1856-1931) worked for Thomas Edison before establishing his own laboratory in the 1890s. On February 28, 1893, Acheson received a U.S. patent on carborundum, an industrial abrasive critical in the mass production of precision-ground, interchangeable metal parts. In 1926, the U.S. Patent Office named carborundum one of the 22 patents most responsible for the industrial age.