 Credit for the invention of Silly Putty is disputed and has been attributed variously to Earl Warrick of the then newly formed Dow Corning; Harvey Chin; and James Wright, a Scottish-born inventor working for General Electric in New Haven, Connecticut.Throughout his life, Warrick insisted that he and his colleague, Rob Roy McGregor, received the patent for Silly Putty before Wright did; but Crayola's history of Silly Putty states that Wright first invented it in 1943.Both researchers independently discovered that reacting boric acid with silicone oil would produce a gooey, bouncy material with several unique properties.