Bette Nesmith Graham, a woman who never finished high school but still went on to become one of the most famous women inventors of the 20th century. Graham is the woman behind liquid paper, better known as white-out. Back before we had the “backspace” button, we used typewriters and typing mistakes could not just be deleted and redone. From watching the window painters at her bank, she observed that instead of removing chunks of paint when they messed up, that they just put another layer of paint over top. Graham found a way to apply this strategy to her typewriting. This saved people the trouble of having to retype whole papers due to typing mistakes.
When people started to learn about Graham’s invention, they flooded her with requests to get some for themselves. Graham started producing and packaging the product from her home. She worked to perfect her mixture and then applied for and received a patent for her product. Within ten years her “liquid paper” had it’s own headquarters and production plant, selling over a million orders each year. Soon after the factory was producing over 25 million bottles of liquid paper a year and employed 200 people. In 1979 Bette Nesmith Graham sold Liquid Paper to Gilette for $47.5 million. She died the next year at 56, so unfortunately a interview with Bette Nesmith Graham would not be possible.
The Famous Women Inventors page led me to discover this amazing woman inventor.
