In the program "Historically yours" on Europe 1 Monday, the journalist David Castello-Lopes returned to the origin of bubble wrap, made for the first time from shower curtains in the 1950s. A history marked by a first commercial failure which should, in theory, have condemned this invention.
>> Every day in
Historically yours
, journalist David Castello-Lopes looks back on the origins of an object or a concept.
On Monday, he looked into bubble wrap and his rather chaotic debut.
Initially imagined as wallpaper, it was then transformed, after a commercial failure, into protective paper for fragile objects.
The first version of bubble wrap was made from shower curtains, reports
David Castello-Lopes.
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The wonderful bubble wrap
"You remember, right here, in front of this microphone, a few weeks ago, I demonstrated that when you twist the bent straws, they make a different noise depending on their size. So I said that I ' waited for whoever would write a piece of music dedicated to the bent straw. ”It turns out that this musical reality of bent straws also applies to the bubbles that make up the wrapping paper.
The bigger the bubbles, the lower the sound they make when bursting.
The smaller the bubbles, the higher the sound.
This time, I am not asking for a suitable piece.
I made it myself.
It is performed entirely with the sounds of bubble wrap being burst.
I did this on Sunday afternoon instead of going for a walk to the Buttes Chaumont.
You see how much I take my position as a columnist to heart.
All this to say that bubble wrap is fascinating.
It makes noise and it is an object that has two lives.
His first, his life of wrapping paper, allows all the fragile things that humanity produces to cross the planet while retaining their dignity.
The second life of bubble wrap comes down to a fun-medical accessory that allows you to de-stress.
Paf, a bubble, and we forget that we were made redundant.
Pif another, and it's not that bad if we got divorced.
Where does this wonder, bubble wrap come from?
Until the fifties, when we wanted to protect things that we sent by post, we used newspaper rolled into a ball.
But this technique had the disadvantage of being a little messy and leaving traces of ink on the objects.
Old wallpaper pattern
And then, in the late 1950s, a Swiss called Marc Chavannes and American, Alfred Fielding, wanted to make textured wallpaper for hipsters.
We can see that it was another time because wallpaper was in fashion.
In 1957, they had another idea.
They came up with plastic wallpaper with bubbles.
They glued plastic shower curtains on, heating them up and leaving air pockets to make it visually appealing.
The failure was bitter.
It was only three years later, in 1960, that they had the idea to sell it as protective paper to send fragile objects.
Marc Chavannes and Alfred Fielding's first customer was IBM, which used bubble wrap to protect its expensive mainframe computers.
Astronomical amounts of bubble wrap
Today, the company still exists.
In 2010, it was producing enough bubble wrap each year to circle the earth ten times.
So much for the
fun fact
.
As for the fun and medical side of bubble wrap, the company was well aware of it.
For a long time, and maybe even now, in some places at company headquarters, employees could isolate themselves to burst small bubbles.
If you don't have bubble wrap handy, know that there is an app on your phone that allows you to drill virtual bubble wrap.
It's called Bubble Wrap.
It's slightly less pleasant than with real bubble wrap but also it's cheaper. "