The industrialist Johann Nepomuk Reithoffer, 1844. Johann Nepomuk Reithoffer (1781-1872) was an industrialist and inventor. In 1824 he received a privilege to produce waterproof fabrics, and in 1828 another for the machine weaving of these fabrics using rubber. In 1831 he founded the Lower Austrian imperial and royal rubber elastic and gutta-percha factory in Wimpassing, (which became the Semperit company in 1912). This was the first factory for the production of rubberized fabrics on the continent.