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Who invented 3D printing?

As with many technological developments, numerous inventors conceived the idea of additive manufacturing

3D printer

Chuck Hull's original 3D printer. 3D Printing Museum

It’s a sad fact that no matter how well you run the race, the only person who’s recognized or remembered is the one who actually won. In the case of 3D printing, that person is Charles W. Hull, a man that many consider the father of additive manufacturing.

Don’t get me wrong. Hull deserves full credit for his technology, and even more so for its commercialization, an effort that produced one of the largest and most successful additive equipment manufacturers in the world—3D Systems. Good one, Chuck.

The problem is, what does “invent” actually mean? Hull filed for a patent on his “apparatus for production of three-dimensional objects by stereolithography” in 1984, a patent that was subsequently granted. In legal terms, he’s the winner.

But do a little Google searching and you’ll find that Wyn Kelly Swainson of Denmark applied for a patent on his “method of producing a three-dimensional figure by holography” in 1967, followed by a “method, medium and apparatus for producing three-dimensional figure product” in 1971, and again in 1975 with a patent application titled “Three dimensional systems.”

Swainson later formed the Formigraphic Engine Co. in California, but he never did develop a commercially viable system. Regardless, you have to give the guy an A for effort.

Five years later, Hideo Kodama of Japan applied for a patent on a “single-beam laser curing” system. Sadly (for him, at least), the application expired before he could complete the “examination stage.”

Feel free to call me Captain Obvious if you already knew all this. And if you’d like to know more, also feel free to look up an excellent paper written by Terry Wohlers that describes this and other facts about 3D printing’s history. There’s also the 3D Printing Museum, which describes attempts at additive manufacturing as far back as 1892 (for topographic mapmaking, of all things).

I’m no inventor. If I were, I’d be off, well, inventing things and not sitting at this damned keyboard all day. But I do like to understand who should get credit for inventing the devices and technologies that affect our daily lives, and in the case of stereolithography, that credit clearly goes to Chuck Hull.

Still, we’ll never know what went awry in Wyn Kelly Swainson’s garage or laboratory or wherever it was he did his inventing. And who knows where 3D printing would be today if he’d succeeded?

According to the 3D Printing Museum, in 1859 French sculptor and photographer François Willème (shown) produced a 3D model using 24 cameras positioned around a subject. The silhouette photographic profiles would be used to create a representative 3D object of relative coarse resolution. Scan of image: Thingiverse

About the Author

Kip Hanson

Kip Hanson is a freelance writer with more than 35 years working in and writing about manufacturing. He lives in Tucson, Ariz.