Liquid Paper

When the electric typewriter was made available in the market in the 1950’s, Bette Nesmith’s boss bought her one Nesmith was typist.He wanted too increase Nesmith’s typing speed and thereby increase her efficiency at work.

However Bette was not familiar with the use of the electric typewriter. The keyboard of the electric typewriter was lighter. She made even more typing errors when using the electric typewriter. She was even unable to finish typing a letter within a working day. She felt sorry for her boss who had spent a lot of money on the new typewriter. She was unable to increase her efficiency but instead became slower in her work.

At one point she began to think of a way to correct her typing errors. An idea came when she remembered that during her secondary school years, her art teacher taught her how to use Gesso ( a hard compound of plaster of Paris or whiting in glue) for errprs in painting. She rushed home to get the white gesso and immediately retirned to her workplace. She used a small brush  and applied some white gesso on the typing errors. She found this to be really good and managed to conceal her typing errors accordingly.

Following this, she kept improving the quality of her homemade correction liquid. She tried mixing the gesso with other chemicals so that the liquid would dry faster when it was applied onto papar. In the mean time, she sold her homemade correction liquid to her colleagues, ftrinds, other typists and office workers nrarby to her company to earn some extra income. Soon after, she resigned from her job to start up her own business to produce this correction liquid. She registered the brand of her correction liquid as Liquid Paper. The business expanded under her management.

In 1972, the famous American stationery group, Gillette Corporation bought over her company for USD$50 million.The brand name Liquid Paper eventually became a byworf for the correction liquid.

Food for Thought :

Demand is the stimulant for innovation and invention to take place. Sometime, it is the simple solution that are able to solve our everyday problems. What remains is for us to realize them.

Short Stories on Discoveries, Inventions, Innovation & Creativity

AAET and UTAR, 2015

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