Sometimes, the bubble wrap that comes with your gift is a gift in itself.
Bubble-wrap popping is a therapeutic addiction that afflicts millions of Americans every year, and a Stevens Institute of Technology graduate is to blame. In fact, most of the world’s bubble wrap still comes from New Jersey.
Bubble wrap wallpaper?
The story of bubble wrap began in a garage in Hawthorne, N.J. in 1957, when two entrepreneurial engineers, Alfred W. Fielding and his partner, Swiss inventor Marc Chavannes, were hard at work trying to invent plastic wallpaper with a paper back.
The attempts at making wallpaper failed, but what they did discover was that their invention was incredibly effective as packing material. Before that time, the only real option available was crumbled newspaper.
Shortly after its discovery, they trademarked the name “Bubble Wrap” and founded the Sealed Air Corporation. A native of Hackensack, N.J., Fielding graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken in 1939. He earned a Master of Science degree from Stevens in 1943. The university later awarded him an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree in 1986.
Today, Sealed Air Corporation, based in Saddle Brook, is a worldwide producer of packaging materials with annual revenues of over $3 billion.
According to Dr. Robert Banks, a chemical engineering professor at Stevens, “Unintended invention is more common than you might think, and the invention of Bubble Wrap is a great example.”
Giving back to Stevens
Fielding is in the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame for his role in creating Bubble Wrap, and was also inducted into The Newcomen Society of the United States in 1982. The Newcomen Society recognizes pioneers who have laid the foundations for major enterprises.
Fielding was also particularly generous to his alma mater, providing funds for a laboratory established during his lifetime, and through his family’s continued generosity, for the future establishment of an endowed chairmanship on the Stevens faculty.
Also, a conference room in the university’s main administration building was named in his honor. Every year, Fielding’s legacy is celebrated on Jan. 26, which has been dubbed national “Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day.”