Where did bubble wrap come from?

In 1957, engineer Alfred Fielding and Swiss-born chemist Marc Chavannes were working in Hawthorne, New Jersey, trying to create textured three-dimensional wallpaper. Their method was simple: they sealed two plastic shower curtains together, which trapped small pockets of air between the layers. The wallpaper idea flopped. They then tried marketing the material as greenhouse insulation, which also failed to take off. The breakthrough came when they realised the trapped air cushions were ideal for protecting fragile items during shipping. In 1960 they founded the Sealed Air Corporation to manufacture and sell the product. One of its first major customers was IBM, which from 1963 used bubble wrap to protect its 1401 computers during transit. 'Bubble Wrap' is a registered trademark of Sealed Air. Fielding and Chavannes were inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1993, and Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day is celebrated on the last Monday of January every year.