The True Story of the Dallas Secretary Who Invented Liquid ...
Bette Nesmith Graham
American typist and inventor of Liquid Paper (–)
Bette Nesmith Graham | |
|---|---|
Bette Nesmith Graham, with son Michael | |
| Born | Bette Clair McMurray ()March 23, Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
| Died | May 12, () (aged&#;56) Richardson, Texas, U.S. |
| Education | High school graduate |
| Known&#;for | Invention of Liquid Paper |
| Spouses | Warren Audrey Nesmith () &#; &#; (m.&#;&#x;&#;&#x;)&#;Robert Graham &#; (m.&#;&#x;&#;&#x;)&#; |
| Children | Michael Nesmith |
| Parent(s) | Jesse McMurray Christine Duval McMurray |
Bette Nesmith Graham (March 23, – May 12, ) was an American typist, commercial artist, and the inventor of the correction fluid Liquid Paper.
See full list on thoughtco.com Bette Nesmith Graham March 23, — May 12, was an American typist, commercial artist, and the inventor of the correction fluid Liquid Paper. Born as Bette Clair McMurry [ 1 ] , she married Warren Nesmith at the age of 19 and became the mother of the musician and producer Michael Nesmith , who later became the guitarist of The Monkees. Bette Nesmith married Robert Graham in , and he helped her run the lucrative Liquid Paper business that she had founded a few years prior. By , she had worked her way up to the position of executive secretary for W. Around this time, electric typewriters were becoming increasingly popular, and Graham and her colleagues at the bank began experiencing trouble with the new IBM electric typewriters.Born as Bette Clair McMurry [1], she married Warren Nesmith at the age of 19 and became the mother of the musician and producer Michael Nesmith, who later became the guitarist of The Monkees. [2] After Warren Nesmith returned from serving in World War II, the couple divorced, leaving Bette to raise Michael as a single mother.
Bette Nesmith married Robert Graham in , and he helped her run the lucrative Liquid Paper business that she had founded a few years prior.
Biography
Born in in Dallas, Texas, Bette Graham dropped out of Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio at the age of seventeen and went to secretarial school [3]. By , she had worked her way up to the position of executive secretary for W.
W. Overton, the Chairman of the Board of the Texas Bank and Trust. Around this time, electric typewriters were becoming increasingly popular, and Graham and her colleagues at the bank began experiencing trouble with the new IBMelectric typewriters. The messy carbon-film ribbons used in typewriters and the primarily mechanical set-ups of the devices made it especially difficult to erase and fix mistakes neatly.
Bette Nesmith Graham: How A Secretarys Innovation Redefined ... Back in the s, most business documents were created on electric typewriters. For secretaries, these machines were both good and bad. While they allowed faster typing, the keys were more sensitive than non-electric models, leading to more typos. And the carbon-based ink in their ribbons was nearly impossible to erase neatly. As a result, a single typo meant retyping a whole sheet — until Bette Nesmith Graham came along.Users typically had to retype entire pages because of one small error, which made correcting errors a painstaking and time-consuming process. As a result, Graham was determined to find a more efficient alternative, leading her to develop the first prototype of "Liquid Paper" in
Career
The original inspiration for Graham's breakthrough innovation came as she observed painters decorating the bank windows for the holidays.
Rather than remove their mistakes entirely, the painters simply covered any imperfections with an additional layer. Applying the artists' technique of painting over mistakes, Graham began experimenting with mixing white, water-based temperapaint to match the color of the bank stationery and cover up her typing errors.
After developing her initial mixture, Graham first used it in the office and saw remarkable results; by using a watercolor brush to apply the correction fluid, her boss never even noticed any concealed mistakes. Her invention began as a kitchen and garage operation, where she used her kitchen blender to mix the correction fluid and then poured it into empty nail polish bottles.
She named the first batch of her new invention "Mistake Out", and she hired her son and his friends to work on assembling the product for $1 per hour in her garage.
When the other secretaries realized how well Graham's invention worked, they requested her for their own supplies of the correction fluid. The inventor sold her first batch of "Mistake Out" in , and soon she was working full-time to produce and bottle it from her North Dallas home.
Her son Michael – who would later achieve fame as a member of the pop group The Monkees – and his friends helped to fill the growing number of orders for Mistake Out. Graham continued to make improvements to her product, testing different angles of cut on the nail polish brush for easier application. Additionally, she experimented with alternative formulas that allowed for quicker drying times.
Before long, she was selling about bottles of Mistake Out every month.
In , Graham renamed her refined product "Liquid Paper" and applied for a patent and a trademark that same year. Although she was fired from her bank job for spending excessive time on her invention, she received a patent for her product and gained General Electric as one of her big corporate clients.
Graham's Liquid Paper Company experienced tremendous growth over the next decade. By , the company had its own corporate headquarters and automated production plant, and sales were in excess of one million units per year. In , Graham moved operations into a 35,sq. ft. international Liquid Paper headquarters building in Dallas. At the height of her success, her company was making 25 million bottles of Liquid Paper per year.
Eventually, she opted to sell the company to Gillette Corporation for over $ million in Following this success and massive growth in wealth, Graham would go on to establish two foundations, the Gihon Foundation, which gave grants and financial support to promote women in the arts, and the Bette Clair McMurray Foundation, which did the same for women in business.
She died shortly afterward on May 12, , due to complications of a stroke. She left her fortune to her son, who took over her foundations that empower striving women.
American entrepreneur who invented Liquid Paper. Born in and raised in Dallas, Texas, she left high school at 17 to marry her high school sweetheart, Warren Nesmith. At 19, she was supporting her son while her husband was fighting in World War II. Divorced soon after her husband's return, she continued to be the sole support of her son. Despite her lack of training, Graham worked most of her life as a secretary, teaching herself basic office skills along the way, including how to type.Management style
From the start, Graham ran her company with a unique combination of spirituality, egalitarianism, and pragmatism. Raised a Baptist, Graham converted to Christian Science in , and this faith inspired the development of her corporate "Statement of Policy". Part code of ethics, part business philosophy, it covered everything from her belief in a "Supreme Being" to a focus on decentralized decision making and an emphasis on product quality over the pursuit of profit.
She also believed that women could bring a more nurturing and humanistic quality to the male world of business, and provided a greenbelt with a fish pond, an employee library, and a childcare center in her new company headquarters in [4]
Legacy
Her only son, musician Michael Nesmith, inherited half of his mother's estate of over $50 million.[5] A portion financed the Gihon Foundation which established the Council on Ideas, a think tank with a retreat center located north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, active from to and devoted to exploring world problems.[6] Additionally, a portion of Graham's estate financed the Betty Clair McMurray Foundation, which focuses on supporting projects such as the exhibit "Texas Women, A Celebration of History," career guidance for unwed mothers, shelter and counseling for battered women, and college scholarships for mature women.[7] As part of its effort to acknowledge prominent people who had been previously overlooked, in The New York Times published a belated obituary for her.[8]
References
- ^"Bette Graham: Liquid Paper".
Lemelson-MIT. Retrieved November 20,
- ^"Bette Nesmith Graham". Famous Women Inventors.Bette nesmith graham biography of rory Bette Nesmith Graham March 23, —May 12, was the inventor and businesswoman who made a fortune from her invention "Liquid Paper," a product which along with its competitors such as Wite-Out, allowed secretaries to quickly correct typing mistakes. Her mother owned a knitting store and taught Bette how to paint; her father worked at an auto parts store. Bette attended the Alamo Heights School in San Antonio, Texas until she was 17, at which point she left school to marry her childhood sweetheart and soldier Warren Nesmith. They divorced in Divorced and with a small child to support, Bette took several odd jobs, eventually learning shorthand and typing.
Retrieved March 18,
- ^"Bette Nesmith Graham: Paper Liquid Inventor". Famous Women Inventors. Retrieved November 20,
- ^James, Edward T., ed. ().
- The secretary who turned Liquid Paper into a multimillion ...
- The True Story of the Dallas Secretary Who Invented Liquid ...
Notable American Women. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
- ^Hollander, Nicole (February 14, ). "From The Folks Who Gave You Liquid Paper". The New York Times. Retrieved March 18,
- ^"The Gihon Foundation".
The secretary who turned Liquid Paper into a multimillion ...: Bette Nesmith Graham (March 23, – May 12, ) was an American typist, commercial artist, and the inventor of the correction fluid Liquid Paper. Born as Bette Clair McMurry [ 1 ], she married Warren Nesmith at the age of 19 and became the mother of the musician and producer Michael Nesmith, who later became the guitarist of The Monkees.
Retrieved December 11,
- ^Jones, Nancy. "Graham, Bette Clair McMurray (–)". Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved September 30,
- ^"Overlooked No More: Bette Nesmith Graham, Who Invented Liquid Paper". The New York Times. Retrieved July 13,