James Franklin Hyneman (born September 25, 1956)[1] is an American special effects expert who was co-host of the television series MythBusters alongside Adam Savage, where he became known for his distinctive beret and walrus moustache. He is also the owner of M5 Industries, the special effects workshop where MythBusters was filmed.
He was an early competitor in Robot Wars, but his robot Blendo was deemed too dangerous for competition.[2] He is the inventor of the Sentry,[3] an unmanned firefighting robotic vehicle. He is also one of the designers of the aerial cable robotic camera system Wavecam used in sports and entertainment events.[4]
Early life
Hyneman was born in Marshall, Michigan, and grew up on a farm in Columbus, Indiana. He said, "I was a problematic kid, to be sure. I left home when I was 14 and hitchhiked all over the country." As a child, Hyneman would spend time at Indiana University, where his mother was a graduate librarian.[5][6] At age fifteen, he owned a pet store in a shopping mall in Columbus.[7] Hyneman graduated from Columbus North High School in 1974.[8]
In November 2021, he was appointed professor of practice at LUT University in Lappeenranta, Finland, for a five-year term until November 2026, and gave his first lecture on prototypes on November 18, 2021.[10][11]
Hyneman owns the special effects company M5 Industries in San Francisco. Some of his achievements in commercials include the can-spitting vending machine seen in 7 Up commercials, and his patented two-wheeled football shoe from Nike Lab commercials.[18]
Other appearances
Hyneman and Adam Savage portray two army junk-sellers in the film The Darwin Awards. They appear during the story of the rocket-car, which they partially reproduced in the MythBusters series's pilot episode and retested twice more.[19]
In 1984, Hyneman met science teacher Eileen Walsh when he owned a sailboat diving charter business in the Virgin Islands. Hyneman and Walsh married in 1989.[24][25] Hyneman is an atheist.[26] He has stated that, while he has not been formally diagnosed, he suspects he displays characteristics of autism spectrum disorder.[27]
^ ab"Skepticality: The MythBusters". www.skepticality.com. Skeptic Magazine. 12 December 2006. Archived from the original on 13 July 2015. Retrieved 7 September 2014.