__1907: __Earl S. Tupper, inventor of the famous Tupperware "burping" plastic kitchenware, is born. Baby Tupper may well have burped for the first time on this day.
The New Hampshire native grew up on farms in Massachusetts. Tupper developed a business selling his parents' produce door-to-door, but scraped through high school, barely graduating.
On the other hand, he took some correspondence courses and was convinced the secret to success was in advertising and marketing. He likened himself to Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and dreamed up hundreds of inventions.
Tupper jotted his ideas down on notepads he always kept in his pockets. The ideas included a better garter for stockings, a clip-on comb to hang from your belt, permanent-press trousers, a boat powered by fish, a convertible top for an automobile rumble seat, a new method to perform emergency appendectomies, and lifestyle brands for cigarettes: "Sporty" and "The Collegiate."
Despite Tupper's dreams to become a famous millionaire, he received nothing but rejection letters from the manufacturers he approached with his ideas. He started a tree-trimming business to support himself, but it went bankrupt in the throes of the Great Depression.
Tupper went to work for a DuPont-owned plastics plant in Leominster, Massachusetts, before striking out on his own once again. He bought some used molding machines and started Tupper Plastics in 1938. The company made beads and plastic cigarette containers.
He tried making products from DuPont polyethylene after World War II, but found the company's formulation too rigid for an idea he had. After obtaining samples without the company's fillers, he set to work tinkering on the Wonderbowl.
It was a polyethylene bowl with an airtight, watertight cover: Just lift the top a tad, "burp" out some air, and push down to seal. Tupper got the idea from the metal lids used on paint cans.
He patented the Tupper seal in 1949. Tupper tried selling his wares in department stores, but the stuff wasn't exactly flying off the shelves. Then a woman who was making lots of money selling Stanley Home Products at house parties realized she could make even more applying the home-party technique to Tupper products.
Brownie Wise started selling Tupperware in 1949 and by 1951 was the general sales manager for the whole operation. Thousands of women across the country made a business out of Tupperware, and millions of customers bought the products.
Tupper was now rich and famous, but eventually began to resent Wise's fame and high profile: She was the first woman to grace the cover of Business Week.
Tupper fired Wise in 1958 and sold the company for $16 million (about $120 million in today's money). He also divorced his wife, bought an island in Central America and moved to Costa Rica to avoid U.S. taxes.
He kept coming up with new ideas, but none of them soared like Tupperware. Tupper died in 1983.
Tupperware has stayed fresh. The company still sells through Tupperware parties in more than 100 countries.
The secret of its success is simple: Just keep a lid on it.
Source: American Experience/PBS
Photo: **tWo pInK pOSsuMs**/Flickr
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