Typists prone to making mistakes when using old-fashioned typewriters or word processors have Bette Nesmith Graham to thank for creating one of the most simple, yet lifesaving inventions in all of office-supply history.
Born in 1924, Nesmith worked as a secretary while earning her GED in night school. While her husband was away in service during World War II, she gave birth to a son, Michael, who would later become a guitarist for the band The Monkees. After her husband returned from the war, the couple divorced, and Nesmith found herself a single mother, left to raise her son alone.
At that time electric typewriters were becoming more and more popular, and in learning to use them, Nesmith and other secretaries often made mistakes they found difficult to erase, in part because of the messy carbon-film ribbons used in the devices. Nesmith knew that artists were accustomed to simply painting over their mistakes with more paint. She thought, why not do the same to cover mistakes made in typewritten ink?
Nesmith came up with a very simple formula that she began making in batches just for herself to use at work. Using her kitchen blender she mixed up some tempera water-based paint, tinting it to match her company stationery. She took it to the office with a watercolor brush and whenever she made a mistake on paper, she simply painted over it and fixed the error.
The formula worked like magic. In fact, her boss never even noticed the corrected errors in her work. It wasn’t long before other secretaries at her company found out about the ingenious solution she had created and when they began asking her if they could use some of the fluid, she began making up bottles, putting labels on them that read “Mistake Out,” and giving them to friends.Nesmith soon began to realize that the product was popular enough to form the basis for a business. She started the Mistake Out Company in 1956 in her home, mixing the fluid in her kitchen and employing her son and his friends to fill bottles for customers.
Nesmith patented the product, renamed it “Liquid Paper,” and obtained a trademark. Before long she was selling around 100 bottles of Liquid Paper per month.
In 1979, she sold her company to the Gillette Corporation for $47.5 million.
Via: Lemelson-MIT Program
Photo by csupomona.edu/oppictures.com.