Invention Of Correction Fluid

Bette Nesmith, later Nesmith Graham, had an enormous influence on two very different areas of life: office work and pop music. In 1942 she gave birth to Mike Nesmith, later of pop group The Monkees, and c.1951 she invented Liquid Paper®.

Like many inventors, Bette Nesmith Graham did not grow up expecting to be an inventor - she had her sights set on becoming an artist. Born Bette McMurry on 23 March 1923 in Dallas, Texas, she dropped out of high school at the age of 17 and managed to get a job as a secretary at a Dallas law firm even though she couldn't type (the firm later sent her on a secretarial course). She married Warren Nesmith in 1940 and two years later, on 20 December 1942, she gave birth to Mike, who would later find fame as the guitarist for pop group The Monkees.

The Nesmiths divorced after the Second World War and Bette, now a single parent, began working as secretary to W.W. Overton at the Texas Bank and Trust, where she had the brainwave that was to make her fortune. She noticed that the bank's signwriters would simply paint over any mistakes, and she wondered if she could cover up typing errors in the same way. As an artist she was used to handling paint, and she mixed up a small bottle of water-based paint to match the color of the company stationary; she then began using a watercolor brush to paint over any typing errors. Overton didn't object, and soon other secretaries began to use her invention, which she called Mistake Out.

Nesmith improved the formula to make it faster drying, and began mixing ever larger quantities using the electric mixer in her kitchen; Mike and his friends would bottle it in the garage. In 1956 she offered to sell the rights for her invention to IBM, who rejected it. Undeterred, she set up her own company, Mistake Out Co., and began selling correction fluid herself. After being fired from Texas Bank and Trust, she and her second husband, Bob Graham, devoted more time to the business (now called Liquid Paper), and it began to grow exponentially. Nesmith used part of her resulting fortune to set up two foundations for women, and when she died in 1980 she willed half her estate to charity.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison