Bob Switzer

Robert C. Switzer (19 May 1914 – 20 August 1997) was an American inventor, businessman and environmentalist. Switzer was co-inventor of the first black light fluorescent paint along with his brother Joseph Switzer and the inventor of the Magnaglo process for nondestructive flaw-detection in machined parts. The brothers founded the Day-Glo Color Corp. in 1946 to develop and manufacture fluorescent paints, pigments and other products.

Biography

Early life Switzer was born in Fromberg, Montana, to parents Maud (Slocum) and Emmet Switzer and was raised in Berkeley California. In 1932, he received a scholarship from the Scaife Scholarship Foundation of Oakland, California, so he attended the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in hopes of becoming a physician.

During the summer of 1933, while working to unload tomatoes from a freight car at a H. J. Heinz Company laboratory in Berkeley, California, Switzer fell and suffered several serious injuries, including a skull fracture and severed optic nerve. Medical doctors told him to stay in a dark room until he recovered his eyesight, a period which lasted several months.

Career While convalescing from his injuries, Switzer and his brother Joseph searched for fluorescent materials, which Joseph had read about and wished to use in his amateur magic shows. The brothers inspected various products from their father's pharmacy, using a black light to identify fluorescent compounds. After Bob's recovery, the brothers continued to experiment with these, mixing them with shellac and eventually succeeding in producing the first black light fluorescent paints. They founded the Fluor-S-Art Co. in 1934 to develop and market their products for advertising displays.

When Day-Glo Color Corp. was sold to Nalco in 1985, Bob and his wife used the proceeds to establish the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation to fund students working on applied environmental problem solving.