![]() In 1965, Tipp-Ex began producing its own fluid in Germany. There were other products that achieved the same goal, such as strips of sticky paper that covered up errors, but Liquid Paper quickly eclipsed them-so much so that it soon drew imitators. (This creative streak would help Mike in his career as an artist-first as a member of the Monkees, and later as a producer of films including Repo Man.) In 1958, she patented Liquid Paper. So she began experimenting with ways to cover up errors, enlisting her son Mike to help her. ![]() The problem was that she wasn’t a good typist, and kept making mistakes. Liquid Paper dates back to the 1950s, when Bette Nesmith Graham, a struggling divorced mother, took on typing jobs to make money. One sign of the cultural impact of the Wite-Out brand is that, like Kleenex, it has become a generic term. But correction fluids are not only surviving-they appear to be thriving, with Wite-Out sales climbing nearly 10 percent in 2017, according to the most recent public numbers. Even paper is disappearing from the modern office, as more and more functions are digitized. But typewriters have disappeared from the modern office, relegated to attics and museums. They were designed to help workers correct errors they made on typewriters without having to retype documents from the start. The sticky, white fluid and its chief rival, Liquid Paper, are peculiar anachronisms, throwbacks to the era of big hair, big cars, and big office stationery budgets. And given how little I write in the other 11 months of the year, that means there are a lot of errors, which in turn spur a new connection with another old friend: Wite-Out. But the end of the year brings out a slew of opportunities for penmanship: adding notes to holiday cards to old friends, addressing them, and then doing the same with thank-you notes after Christmas. Like many Americans above grammar-school age, I seldom write by hand anymore, outside of barely legible grocery lists. *Source: The NPD Group/Retail Tracking Service and Commercial Tracking Service, U.S., based on actual unit sales 12ME June 2022 combined.Christmastime is when the pens in my house get their biggest workout of the year.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |