1850s |
States begin passing married women's property laws, allowing married women to control their own earnings and inheritances for the first time. |
1862 |
At the Great International Exhibition in London, Alexander Parkes presents the first plastic, an organic material derived from cellulose that can be heated and molded, and holds its shape when cooled. |
1866 |
A $10,000 contest is announced for a material to replace the ivory in billiard balls. Formulating his entry, Albany printer John Wesley Hyatt processes cellulose in a new way and invents celluloid, a substance "tough as whalebone; elastic and dense as ivory." |
1886 |
Twenty-eight-year-old door-to-door book salesman David McConnell starts the California Perfume Company when he discovers that the free perfume samples he gives out are the real reason people buy from him. In 1939 his company will be renamed Avon. |
1891 |
A French count named Louis Marie Hilaire Bernigaut, looking for a way to produce synthetic silk, invents rayon. |
1900 |
After witnessing a wine-stained tablecloth being discarded, Swiss textile engineer Jacques Edwin Brandenberger seeks a way for fabric to be wiped clean. He invents a clear, flexible film covering: cellophane. |
1906 |
Alfred C. Fuller, a 21-year-old entrepreneur, establishes the Fuller Brush Company, selling brushes and household cleaners door-to-door. |
1907 |
July 28: Earl Tupper is born in New Hampshire to Ernest and Lulu Tupper.
A Belgian chemist living in New York, Leo Baekeland, invents Bakelite, the first completely synthetic man-made substance. Radios, telephones, tableware and jewelry are all made from Bakelite. |
1913 |
May 25: Brownie Mae Humphrey is born in Georgia. Her parents will divorce soon afterward.
An improved form of cellophane, now the first fully flexible, water-proof wrap, starts a plastics craze.
The Ford Motor Company sets up the first moving assembly line to build its Model T automobiles. |
1917 |
The U.S. enters World War I. |
1918 |
Brownie Humphrey's mother, a union organizer, leaves five-year-old Brownie to live with her aunt and cousins while she travels for her work. |
1919 |
The first mass-produced refrigerators appear in American stores. |
1920 |
The 19th Amendment grants U.S. women the right to vote.
Congress creates a Women's Bureau in the Department of Labor to represent the interests of wage-earning women. |
1924 |
November: Teenager Earl Tupper writes an essay on becoming a millionaire: "What a time we would have if we had plenty of money... All our hopes and dreams of the future depend upon 'if I can get the Price.'" |
1925 |
Earl Tupper graduates from Fitchburg High School in central Massachusetts. |
1926 |
Waldo Semon, a B. F. Goodrich chemist trying to bind rubber to metal, develops the first practical form of vinyl. |
1929 |
The stock market crashes; the Great Depression begins. |
1930 |
Dale Carnegie publishes his best-selling manual, How to Win Friends and Influence People. |
1931 |
October 20: Earl Tupper marries Marie Whitcomb.
Frank Stanley Beveridge, a successful Fuller Brush salesman, founds Stanley Home Products in western Massachusetts. |
1933 |
E. W. Fawcett and R. O. Gibson, working in an Imperial Chemical Industries research laboratory, invent polyethylene. Their new plastic will play an important role in wartime production as insulation on cables and radar equipment -- but will not be used for domestic purposes until after World War II.
A student lab assistant at Dow Chemical, Ralph Wiley, accidentally discovers polyvinylidene chloride, a film barrier to air and water. Dow gives it the trade name Saran. |
1936 |
December 15: Brownie Humphrey marries Robert Wise, a Ford Motor Company employee. They move to Detroit. |
1938 |
Earl Tupper founds the Tupper Plastics Company.
Spring: Salesman Norman W. Squires writes a script for a "Hostess Group Demonstration Plan" and sends it to the president of Stanley Home Products. His method of direct sales through home parties is so successful that within two years a Stanley executive will call Squires the "Father of the Hostess Plan."
May 25: Jerry Wise, Brownie Wise's only child, is born.
April 6: DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett accidentally creates polytetrafluoroethylene, a white, waxy polymer. The highly slippery substance is dubbed Teflon.
October 27: DuPont unveils nylon, the first totally synthetic fiber, developed under the guidance of chemist Wallace Hume Carothers. Within a year, nylon will be introduced as a silk substitute in the manufacture of women's stockings. |
1939 |
September 1: Germany declares war on Poland, starting World War II.
Brownie Wise writes in to a Detroit newspaper readers' column under the pen name "Hibiscus." She will contribute to the column for several years. |
1941 |
December 7: Pearl Harbor is attacked, and the U.S. declares war on Japan and Germany. |
1942 |
February 10: Brownie and Robert Wise divorce. |
1945 |
Earl Tupper obtains some polyethylene from DuPont and begins to develop his wonder bowl with its soon-to-be-famous "burping" seal.
May 7: Germany surrenders to Allied forces.
early August: The U.S. drops atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
September 2: Japan formally surrenders; World War II ends.
"Queen for a Day," a radio game show, first airs. The female contestant whose life story is the saddest, as judged by audience applause, wins a household appliance of her choice. |
