James B. Horton, 95 years old, formerly of Bethlehem, PA passed away on Sunday, November 20, 2016 in Williamsburg, VA. He was born in Brewer, Maine, the son of James N. Horton and Sarah Bartlett Horton. He was married to Marion Adamy Horton for 63 years, then widowed in 2013. Horton graduated from the University of Maine with high distinction in 1942. He was elected to Phi Kappa Phi, Tau Beta Pi, and Alpha Chi Sigma societies. He majored in Chemical Engineering. He was employed by Bethlehem Steel Corp. in their Looper Management Course in June 1942. He was assigned to Forge Specialty Heat Treatment as an expediter and shift foreman. In November 1945 he was inducted into the Army and served until 1946, when he returned to Bethlehem Steel in the Research Department where he specialized in corrosion and coatings research. His duties were engineer, supervisor, section manager and assistant to the manager of product research.

While employed at Bethlehem he earned his MS and PhD at Lehigh University in 1957 and 1964 with theses on why weathering steel such as Mayari-R is more corrosion-resistant than ordinary steel. A paper on this subject was presented by Horton in Moscow, Russia in 1966 at the Third International Congress on Metallic Corrosion. In 1973, he gave a paper to AISI meetings in Pittsburgh and San Francisco on the embedment of industrial dusts of the locale in the rust layers forming on steel in the area. He was elected to AISI membership and served on an AISI committee monitoring AISI sponsored projects at various universities. He was elected General Secretary of ASTM (American Society of Testing Metals) Committee G-1.

He held 13 patents in the US and cross-filed in foreign countries, the most notable being the invention of Galvalume, an Aluminum Zinc alloy coated steel sheet. Most steel companies throughout the world now produce Galvalume sheet. From 1972 when Galvalume was first produced and sold by Bethlehem Steel to December 2008, a total of 100,000,000 tons of Galvalume have been produced by the world’s steel industry.

In the year 2000, Horton and Angelo Borzillo, co-inventors of Galvalume, were named  by the Morning Call newspaper as Inventors of the Century. Horton is predeceased by his wife of 63 years, Marion, and is survived by four children- Lin Gendell of Williamsburg, VA, Laurie Jackson of Ft. Myers, FL, James Horton of New Tripoli, PA and John Horton of Ft. Myers, FL and their husbands and wives and 6 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be private.