Bette Nesmith Graham

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Bette Nesmith Graham (born March 23, 1924 in Dallas as Bette Clair McMurray , † May 12, 1980 in Richardson , Texas) was an American entrepreneur. She invented a typo correction fluid that was marketed under the trademark Liquid Paper . This product is comparable to the Tipp-Ex known in Germany , but not identical.

Life

At the age of 19 she married her first husband, Warren Nesmith. During his absence as a soldier in World War II, she gave birth to her son Michael Nesmith , who later became famous as a member of the band The Monkees . After the divorce from her husband in 1946, she and her son had to survive on their own and from 1951 worked as a secretary at the "Texas Bank and Trust" in Dallas. During this time, the newly introduced electric typewriters caused problems because the keystroke was easy and the numerous typing errors that could not be erased without leaving visible traces on the paper. Graham was a hobby painter and had the idea to cover up typos instead. To do this, she mixed a tempera color to match the paper color, which could then be applied to the area to be corrected with a brush and then overwritten after drying. Initially, this home-made correction fluid, which she called Mistake Out , was only used by herself and a few colleagues. An attempt to sell the idea to IBM failed in 1957. Then Graham began to market the product himself. An advertisement in The Office magazine brought her her first major orders in 1958. The company General Electric ordered 300 bottles of what their former monthly production greatly exceeded. In 1962 she married Robert M. Graham, who joined her company. In 1963 it increased its production tenfold to 5,000 bottles per month. In 1968 the company moved into its own factory building in Dallas and that year sold for the first time a million bottles of the correction fluid, which has now been patented and renamed Liquid Paper . The company continued to expand, in 1975 it produced 500 bottles per minute. In the same year she divorced her husband, but he continued to work in a leading position in the company. As a result, there were legal disputes between her and the management board. In 1979 Liquid Paper Corporation was sold to Gillette for just under $ 48 million .

Others

Bette Graham, who belonged to the Christian Science doctrine , established two foundations: the Betty Clair McMurray Foundation in 1976 and the Gihon Foundation in 1978. It promoted women artists in particular.

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