Happy Birthday Silly Putty

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

This would fall under “strange tech” I suppose, but this year Silly Putty turns 55. What I love about the story is that it was invented by GE, but it took an out of work advertising executive to figure out how market an odd putty as a toy. Of course, my parents never got over the time my sister (or was that me!) got Silly Putty in the carpet - toy was not exactly how they viewed it after that, but if was fun copying cartoon images from the newspaper on the putty’s surface - until it became a charcoal colored lump.

Silly Putty is celebrating its 55th birthday this year. More than 300 million Silly Putty eggs (4,500 tons) have been sold since the product went on the market in 1950. James Wright, a researcher at the General Electric Company’s lab in New Haven, Connecticut, discovered Silly Putty accidentally in 1943 in the process of trying to make synthetic rubber (which was in short supply in the United States during World War II). GE was unable to find any practical use for the product and it remained a curiosity until Peter Hodgson, an unemployed advertising man, saw it at a party in 1949. The rest, it is said, is history. Source: Lockergnome

How to Make Your Own Silly Putty