r/todayilearned • u/Willing-Student-5604 • 7h ago
TIL that Bette Nesmith Graham invented correction fluid in her kitchen using tempera paint and a blender, built a successful company selling it to typists, and was eventually fired from her job after accidentally using her own company's name on her employer's letterhead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Paper•
u/tendieboy99 6h ago
Her son was Mike Nesmith from The Monkees. He inherited the Liquid Paper fortune and used it to pioneer music videos before MTV was even a thing.
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u/auximines_minotaur 4h ago edited 4h ago
He was also one of the main inventors of country rock. The man is a hero, and his music is legend.
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u/Which-Journalist-748 4h ago
Hey chef
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u/Chateaudelait 2h ago
The first video show I ever saw was a Mike Nesmith production called Pop Clips. He used that liquid paper money to revolutionize music videos.
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u/Onehandedclapboyoo 7h ago
Hey hey we're The Monkees
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u/robotunes 7h ago
My favorite part of the theme songs is the disclaimer in the lyrics:
SOME of you better get ready; we MAY be coming to your town!
Anyway, here's Bette Nesmith Graham's son and his friends when they were just a bunch of broke unknowns .
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u/bloodfist 6h ago
here's my favorite Monkee's fact, in thanks:
The "No, no, no" in Last Train to Clarksville is intended to be the opposite of the "Yeah, yeah, yeah" from The Beatles' She Loves You. They say yeah, the Monkees say no. The yeahs descend in pitch, the no's ascend in pitch.
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u/riche_god 7h ago
Explain the lyric? Seems very generic
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u/robotunes 6h ago
The lyric was written before the ahow was aired, before they became a hit. There was no guarantee that the Monkees would become big enough to do concert tours.
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u/needlestack 3h ago
If you remember the Monkees at all, and enjoyed anything about them, you owe it to yourself to watch HEAD, their magnum opus. I'm not kidding. It's amazing.
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u/sarikaya_komzin 5h ago
I've been watching through the monkees and it was was tough to learn that they weren't all buddies and that two actively disliked each other. It kinda takes the fun out of the show a little bit.
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u/ribblesquat 4h ago
I've recently been thinking about doing that myself. I grew up watching the reruns on Nickelodeon (possibly the Nick at Nite block) and with what a shitshow the world is today I thought some cheery colorful 60s cheese might be good for the soul. Get Smart and 60s Batman are other leading candidates. There's no color to this one but I might even throw in some Dobie Gillis.
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u/Gladyskravitz99 7h ago
More importantly, she was the mother of one of The Monkees
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u/84thPrblm 7h ago
Haven't you always wanted a Monkee?!
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u/sinsculpt 7h ago
Pshh... If I had a million dollars, maybe.
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u/mitchymitchington 7h ago
We wouldn't have to eat kraft dinner. But we would eat kraft dinner. Of course we would we'd just eat more
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u/djhankb 7h ago
Dijon ketchup, mmmmmm
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u/mitchymitchington 7h ago
I love fancy ketchups
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u/Particular_Heron8263 6h ago
They have pre wrapped sausages but gh Y don't have pre wrapped bacon...
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u/84thPrblm 7h ago
That right there is one of my most favorite lines! Along with, "But not a real green dress that's cruel."
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u/ezirb7 7h ago
FOR CRIPES SAKE!
(If anyone knows the recording this is off of, I've been looking for it for years. It's a BNL single that I had on my first mp3 player 20+ years ago..)
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u/Flomar76 7h ago
Look no more. Barenaked Ladies Rock Spectacle Live 1996
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u/84thPrblm 7h ago
They've published more than one version - my favorite is on the Shoebox EP my dad's second wife gave me back in the mid 90s. The kids, my gf, and I would dance around the kitchen singing along whenever we played it.
Such good times!
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u/Additional_Pen1505 7h ago
Michael Nesmith! he actually inherited a huge chunk of the fortune and used it to help fund early music videos and MTV concepts
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u/SeasonAdmirable2527 2h ago
How is that more important than the multimillion-dollar business she built as a woman in the 1950s?
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u/Lopsided_Tiger_0296 7h ago
I always preferred the roll on ones like tape
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u/Xszit 6h ago
The tape is so much better than the fluid because it will only be fluid the first time you open a new bottle then it instantly congeals into a useless lumpy mess.
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u/koos_die_doos 6h ago
If you were a typist, you would use the whole bottle long before it got lumpy.
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u/Wheres_my_guitar 7h ago
I believe she sold to Gilette for like a billion dollars. I think she ended up okay.
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u/DevCatOTA 6h ago
Per Wikipedia
She sold Liquid Paper to Gillette Corporation in 1979 for at least $47.5 million.
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u/Wheres_my_guitar 6h ago
Not quite a billion but still an unfathomable amount of money for a working class mother in the 70s.
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u/Skatchbro 6h ago
47.5 million. Still pretty good for 1979.
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u/throwawayacc201711 6h ago
Equivalent of 218 million in today’s dollars
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u/Skatchbro 6h ago
I could live well on that. And finance a boy band while I’m at it. I’d call it The Party Posse.
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u/Snerkbot7000 6h ago
If only she had a product that could have been used to cover up the other letterhead.
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u/TheMuffler42069 6h ago
Wow so she invented something and made a bunch of money independently in 1956 ? Wow. Given that so many people insist that she wouldn’t have been able to have a bank account, where did she put all that correction fluid money she made ? Where was she putting the money from her regular job that she also probably didn’t have according to modern feminists ? I mean… how long of a chain could her husband reasonably make to stretch from his kitchen all the way to whatever company she worked for ? That seems implausible.
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u/Giminykrikits 6h ago
As a woman in1956 she would have been able to open a bank account in her name only. Everything had to be with a husband, a father or a brother. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) passed in 1974. After that women could open accounts, even get mortgages. My mother was one of the first, if not the first single woman to get a 30 year fixed rate mortgage in our County in 1974.
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u/film_composer 7h ago
Losing her job because of a typo slipping through at least gave her a irony-laden story to share.