When was typing correction fluid invented

Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Mary Bellis. Inventions Expert. Mary Bellis covered inventions and inventors for ThoughtCo for 18 years.

She is known for her independent films and documentaries, including one about Alexander Graham Bell. December 30, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Bellis, Mary. Liquid Elements on the Periodic Table. Learn About the U. Presidential Oath of Office. Handwritten documents in ink are also more easily corrected with Wite-Out than rewritten. But today, even printer sales are down , casualties of an era when more and more writing is executed on-screen and never printed or written out at all.

In fact, the office-supply industry as a whole is slumping. According to a report by the analysis firm Technavio, the U. The paper industry has had it especially bad. Yet correction fluid remains remarkably resilient. Somehow, more than a decade on, it has kept its ground. According to the NPD Group, which tracks marketing data, sales of correction fluid grew 1 percent from to , though they fell 7 percent the year before.

Correction tapes were flat, while correction pens are fading. From to to , Bic, which makes Wite-Out and Tipp-Ex, reported that correction products increased in share from 5 to 6 to 9 percent of the global stationery market. The liquid was fast-drying, making it possible to type over the error within a minute after the application.

Because the correction liquid was almost identical to the shade of good quality typing paper, the correction looked far more professional than other methods of the day, and could almost be undetectable.

At one point, she attempted to arrange a deal with IBM, who passed on the product. Graham continued to market the product herself. As a result, she invented Liquid Paper correction fluid, which became a business that made her millions, as the New York Times details in a recent obituary , part of their "Overlooked" series. Graham was divorced and functioning as a single mother in her early 20s, working a number of side hustles in art and modeling.

But she got frustrated making typos on her typewriter that she couldn't fix. Tapping into her artistic background, Graham created her own solution: obscure typos using fast-drying white tempera paint and a watercolor brush. She covertly sold the correction fluid to other secretaries and, later, to wholesalers. Four years after coming up with Mistake Out, Graham accidentally signed a bank letter with the name of her private company and got fired.