What was bubble wrap originally invented for?

Somewhere right now, someone is popping bubble wrap instead of doing their job. It feels like the stuff was designed purely for protecting vases and calming nerves. In fact, its inventors wanted you to glue it to your living room walls.

The short answer

Bubble wrap began life in 1957 as an attempt at textured plastic wallpaper. Its inventors, engineer Alfred Fielding and Swiss inventor Marc Chavannes, were working in New Jersey when they sealed two plastic shower curtains together with heat and ended up with a sheet full of trapped air bubbles.

The real story

Fielding and Chavannes were aiming for something modern and textured that would appeal to the Beat generation. What they produced was a bubbly plastic sheet, and at first they were disappointed with it. As wallpaper, it simply did not sell.

Rather than give up, they brainstormed. According to Smithsonian Magazine, they considered more than 400 possible uses. One serious attempt was greenhouse insulation. It was tested, and it did not work well either.

The pair founded the Sealed Air company in 1960 to develop the material. The breakthrough came from a marketer, Frederick W. Bowers, who saw a perfect customer: IBM. The computer giant had announced its IBM 1401 in October 1959 and needed a way to protect delicate machines in transit. Bubble wrap did the job, IBM bought it, and a failed wallpaper suddenly had a career.

The patents followed. One for the manufacturing method is dated 28 July 1964. Sealed Air would later grow into a multi-billion-dollar business, and in August 1981 it filed to trademark the name Bubble Wrap.

And the twist: the product that saved the company was the same one that failed twice. Nothing about the material changed. Only the idea of what it was for changed.

Why people get it wrong

Bubble wrap is so perfectly suited to packaging that it is hard to imagine it was not designed for it. When a product fits its job this well, we assume the job came first. That is a very human mistake, and a lot of inventions have a similar backstory where the original plan flopped and a second use took off.

It also helps that the wallpaper idea sounds faintly ridiculous today. Picture visiting a friend whose walls are covered in poppable plastic. You would never leave. That absurdity makes the true story feel like a joke, so people tend to dismiss it or never hear it at all.

The lesson for inventors is oddly encouraging. Your invention might not be wrong. It might just be in the wrong room.

“They tried to put it on your walls. Then your greenhouse. Then your computer. Third time lucky. Now stop popping it and listen.”