Bet you never knew who invented the white out, unless you are another fifth grader who is studying the inventor of white out. The white out is a white liquid you can use to cover mistakes if you do not already know that. The inventor of the useful white out goes by Bette Nesmith Graham. She had made her invention by their job too. Bette dropped out of school and she started working in a bank. Early typewriters were hard to use, and Bette needed something to help. That was when the white out came…
The awesome white out inventor was born to Bette Claire McMurray in Dallas, Texas on March 23rd, 1924. Bette’s father was an auto wholesaler, and Bette’s mother was a housewife who dabbled in painting, singing, and needlework. She dropped out of high school at seventeen to become a secretary in law firm. Bette and Warren Audrey Nesmith married but when Warren left to fight in the World War II. In 1946, they divorced. Bette needed to support herself as a single mother, so she worked in the Texas Bank. She was the highest ranking secretary there. When Bette made a mistake in her job, it was very hard to erase using the early typewriters. So she came up with a plan. Bette said, “With lettering, an artist never corrects by erasing, but always paints over the error. So I decided to use what artists use. I put some tempera water-based paint in a bottle and took my watercolor brush to the office. I used that to correct my mistakes started off using the paint to “cheat” on her mistakes.”
Early typewriters were really hard to use. When you typed on a typewriter, it prints out after you type it. Not like today, where you can press the backspace. Bette used this secretly for about five years. But there was a bad part: Bette had to wait till the paint dried. It took a long time and was frustrating. But with some help from her son (Michael)’s chemistry teacher, she was able to upgrade her paint so that it dried quickly. Bette had only made the white out for herself to clear her mistakes, but another secretary saw the new invention and asked for some of the correcting fluid. Bette found a green bottle at home, wrote “Mistake Out” on a label, and gave it to her friend. Soon all the secretaries in the building were asking for some too. Later in 1956, Bette marketed her “Mistake Out.” After a few years, she changed it to Liquid Paper Company when she began her own company. In 1979, there were about 200 employees. The white out is used for covering mistakes.
Bette sold the Liquid Paper Company to the Gillette Corporation for $47.5 million in 1979. Nowadays, the white out is sold all over the world and lots of new companies have opened. Of course, it is not known as “cheating” anymore. The invention hasn’t changed much over time, except for more different kinds of white out, like the brush kind and the shaking kind. The white out is a great help for me, like when I make a careless mistake with a marker or pen, I can take out my white out and paint it across my mistake. Because of the white out, I can get rid of my mistake and not have to write over it and ruin it or get a new piece of paper. The Liquid Paper Company is still running today.
Today, if you could look at every office desk and every school in the world, I bet you could find some white out. Even though we now have computers and print when we want it to print, we still make mistakes with a pen, marker, or when we are filling out important forms. Bette’s white out is here to save your work. The lady who dropped out of school and inventor of Liquid Paper had helped us.
Bibliography
- Vare, Ethlie Ann and Greg Ptacek. Mothers of Invention. 1350 Avenue of the Americas, NY 10019: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
- “Bette Nesmith Graham. Bette Nesmith Graham- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This page was last modified on 15 January 2010 at 20:38. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bette_Nesmith_Graham>
- “Liquid Paper-Bette Nesmith Graham” Mary Bellis. ©2010 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company. <http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/liquid_paper.htm>