Bubble wrap, a sheet of thin plastic filled with air bubbles, is one of the most common packing materials. Before it was invented, people used balled-up newspaper to safeguard items during shipping. But it was messy and didn’t offer that much
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. Bubble wrap solved these problems and was a “godsend” for the shipping industry. However, the invention of bubble wrap was actually quite
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.
Originally, bubble wrap was created in the late 1950s by two engineers for use as a wallpaper that would appeal to the young postwar generation. They placed two pieces of plastic shower curtain through a heat-sealing machine to create the texture. But the result was
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. What turned out was only a plastic sheet with trapped air bubbles in it, far from the material they had intended to produce.
However, the inventors did not totally
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their failed product. They found that their invention could have a different use. The air bubbles created excellent cushions to
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shock, perfect for packaging and shipping fragile items. To market this invention, the two engineers
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a company in 1960 and named their product Bubble Wrap. Meanwhile, IBM, the leading computer maker at the time, needed a safe way of packing their
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electronic devices for transit. They found bubble wrap to be the answer to their problem. That opened the door for a lot of other businesses to start using bubble wrap. During the 1970s and 1980s, the company branched into creating more packing products. Bubble wrap has since evolved into different shapes, sizes, and thicknesses for
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applications.
Besides using it for shipping, people find great joy in popping those air-filled pockets. Some are even
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to doing it—always needing to have just one more pop. Scientific research has found an explanation for this phenomenon: The simple
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of popping helps to release muscle tension and take the mind off a stressful situation. From packing material to a therapeutic tool, bubble wrap has come a long way since its original purpose as wallpaper.