Want to read more about Graham? Click the link in our profile! Bette Nesmith Graham, born in in Dallas, was an executive secretary for the chairman of the board of Texas Bank and Trust when she came up with her breakthrough creation, according to the Lemelson MIT website -- a program that celebrates outstanding inventors and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention.
In , Graham and her colleagues began using the new electric typewriters, which would often lead them to become frustrated for having to retype entire pages if they made a typing mistake, according to women-inventors. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance.
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She is known for her independent films and documentaries, including one about Alexander Graham Bell. December 30, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Bellis, Mary. Liquid Elements on the Periodic Table. Learn About the U. At the start of the business, she mixed up batches in her kitchen using her blender. She employed her son and his friends to put the liquid into the bottles, trim the small brushes so that they were easier to use on small mistakes, and add labels.
Initially the company was called the MistakeOut Company. On weekends she wrote letters and set up appointments to meet with companies that might market and distribute the product but it was slow-going. By , the business was occupying all her time. That year she applied for a patent and changed the company name to Liquid Paper. Publicity in an office supply magazine resulted in a major order from General Electric, and that was the big break she needed. Bette Nesmith Graham moved out of her kitchen and operated her business from a trailer and then moved to a small house.
In , she opened a fully-automated plant for making and packaging the product and moved her office into official headquarters in downtown Dallas.
By , the company was producing 25 million bottles a year and was more than holding its own against companies like Wite-Out created in In , Bette married Robert Graham, a frozen food salesman, who started working with her in business. In , the couple divorced, causing major problems with the business.
As a result, she invented Liquid Paper correction fluid, which became a business that made her millions, as the New York Times details in a recent obituary , part of their "Overlooked" series. Graham was divorced and functioning as a single mother in her early 20s, working a number of side hustles in art and modeling.
But she got frustrated making typos on her typewriter that she couldn't fix. Tapping into her artistic background, Graham created her own solution: obscure typos using fast-drying white tempera paint and a watercolor brush.
She covertly sold the correction fluid to other secretaries and, later, to wholesalers. Four years after coming up with Mistake Out, Graham accidentally signed a bank letter with the name of her private company and got fired.
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