Passaic Today

We finish our month-long celebration of National Inventors Day with an acknowledgement of something that is well, everywhere today— “Bubble Wrap”!  Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes invented their product on Wagaraw Road in Hawthorne in 1957.

Some interesting tidbits:– The first “bubble wrap” was two pieces of plastic shower curtain through a heat machine.  It was a sheet of film with trapped air bubbles.– Alfred Fielding lived in Wayne and brought an early bubble wrap sample for his son Howard to play with. Howard later stated “I say I’m the first person to pop Bubble Wrap, but I’m sure it’s not true. The adults at my father’s firm likely did so for quality assurance. But I was probably the first kid”.  Howard loved the popping sound it made.– The Sealed Air Corporation started in 1960 and IBM was one of their first major customers.  With IBM’s 1401 Unit, computers could be shipped without damage.  Many other businesses began to use bubble wrap after seeing IBM’s success.  Before bubble wrap, newspapers were often used for shipping products.  However, the paper really didn’t offer much protection.– Today, there’s a “99.9 percent chance” that products shipped from Amazon are found in a Sealed Air product.

The image shows part of the bubble wrap patent. From the United States Patent and Trademark Office, patent number US-3142599-A.

Original source can be found here.