Bubble Wrap Was Supposed to be Wallpaper

Bubble Wrap, those protective sheets that keep things from breaking and are fun to pop, didn’t start its life intended for those uses. Believe it or not, bubble wrap was originally supposed to be used as wallpaper.

Bubble Wrap was invented in 1957 by two engineers named Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes. They were attempting to make a covering for walls consisting of two shower curtains made of plastic laminated together that had trapped air bubbles between the layers. It would have been a 3D looking wallpaper, but the idea never took off. People in the late 1950s weren’t interested in having bubbles on their walls.

The idea was far from dead, however. Fielding and Chavannes started the Sealed Air Corporation in 1960, and the pair first tried out the bubble material for use as insulation in greenhouses. Unfortunately, this too didn’t catch on. It was a year later when they discovered it could be used for something more practical, and it found its use as a packing material. They originally called the product Air Cap until it was changed to the more appropriately titled Bubble Wrap.

The big break for Bubble Wrap happened when IBM became the company’s first big client. Bubble Wrap was used to protect shipments of the company’s 1401 business computers. This helped Bubble Wrap become a staple in protecting objects in packaging.