NOTEWORTHY INVENTORS:
EARL TUPPER
Who hasn’t stored food in Tupperware at some time? It’s become the word that stands for nearly any plastic container used for leftovers! Here are the facts on its inventor, New Hampshire-born Earl Tupper.
He was tireless in his efforts to sell his inventions, but with very few results. He finally established a tree surgery and landscaping business, married, and settled down.
• As a youth raised on a farm, Earl was a hard-working, enterprising young man who sold his family’s produce door-to-door. His father was a laid-back tinkerer without much ambition, and his mother took in laundry and boarders to supplement the family’s income.
• Tupper’s business prospered until the Great Depression, when lack of customers forced him into bankruptcy in 1936. What seemed to be devastating became the turning point in Tupper’s life. He took a job in a Massachusetts plastic factory, working in the manufacturing division of DuPont.
• Although intelligent and innovative, Earl struggled in school, barely graduating. He took correspondence courses after high school, including one in advertising. When his parents started up a greenhouse in Massachusetts, Earl urged them to be more assertive in marketing their products, but to no avail. • Earl carried a notebook of his ideas at all times, making illustrations of various gadgets as they came to mind. He had ideas for improved stocking garters, combs that would clip to a belt, pants that would maintain their crease, and a convertible top for a rumble seat, along with hundreds of other designs.
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