Liquid Paper - Bette Nesmith Graham

Weirdness! And irony! And, um, The Monkees...
Liquid Paper - Bette Nesmith Graham: "Liquid Paper - Bette Nesmith Graham (1922-1980)

Bette Nesmith Graham was a secretary and a single mother who used her own kitchen blender to mix up her first batch of liquid paper.

It was originally called 'mistake out' and was the invention of Bette Nesmith Graham, a secretary in Dallas and a single mother raising a son, Michael (The Monkees). Bette Nesmith Graham was an artist and use to handling paints and inks. She used her own kitchen blender to mix up her first batch of liquid paper, the substance used to cover up mistakes made on paper.

Bette Nesmith Graham put some tempera waterbased paint, colored to match the stationery she used, in a bottle and took her watercolor brush to the office. She used this to correct her typing mistakes… her boss never noticed. Soon another secretary saw the new invention and asked for some of the correcting fluid. Graham found a green bottle at home, wrote "Mistake Out" on a label, and gave it to her friend. Soon all the secretaries in the building were asking for some, too.

In 1956, Bette Nesmith Graham started the Mistake Out Company (later renamed Liquid Paper) from her North Dallas home. She turned her kitchen into a laboratory, mixing up an improved product with her electric mixer. Graham’s son, Michael Nesmith (later of The Monkees fame), and his friends filled bottles for her customers. Nevertheless, she made little money despite working nights and weekends to fill orders. One day an opportunity came in disguise. Graham made a mistake at work that she couldn’t correct, and her boss fired her. She now had time to devote to selling Liquid Paper, and business boomed."