Drywall

For centuries, interior walls required skilled plasterers applying wet plaster in multiple coats over wooden lath strips—a process taking weeks to complete as each layer dried. Augustine Sackett, a Civil War veteran and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumnus, saw an opportunity to prefabricate this labor-intensive process into factory-made panels that any carpenter could install.

Sackett's insight came from observing existing building panels made from straw and tar. These boards worked as sheathing but were highly flammable—unsuitable for interior walls. In 1888, he conceived substituting a thin layer of plite of Paris for the tar, creating a fireproof panel. His patent application, filed May 23, 1890, and granted as U.S. Patent 520,123 on May 22, 1894, described an 'inside-wall covering' that would transform construction.

Sackett Board consisted of a gypsum plaster core sandwiched between four plies of wool felt paper. The resulting panel was rigid enough to resist cracking yet soft enough to accept nails. Unlike wet plaster, it arrived at job sites ready to install—no waiting for coats to dry, no dependence on plasterers' schedules, no weather limitations.

The commercial potential was substantial. By 1901, Sackett operated several production facilities generating nearly 5 million square feet of board annually. In 1909, U.S. Gypsum Company acquired his plants, beginning corporate consolidation of the industry. Continuous refinement followed: folded edges in 1910 prevented board crumbling; elimination of interior paper plies in 1913 created a solid gypsum core; by 1916 the product resembled modern drywall.

Adoption remained slow until labor shortages during World War II forced construction to mechanize. With plasterers scarce and housing demand urgent, builders discovered that drywall reduced wall finishing from weeks to days. Post-war suburban construction cemented drywall's dominance. Today, 97 percent of new American homes use gypsum board.

The transformation was profound: a craft requiring years of apprenticeship became a task any general contractor could complete. Construction timelines compressed. Housing costs dropped. The standardized, modular building practices that define modern construction became possible.

Sackett died in New York City in 1914, before seeing drywall become ubiquitous. In 2017, more than a century after his patent, the National Inventors Hall of Fame inducted him for Sackett Board—recognition of an invention so successful it became invisible, noticed only when absent.