Sweet dreams, entrepreneur

You will never guess how this surprising story ends. (2 minute read)

During WWII, there was a rubber shortage in the United States because all of the countries from which America normally got its rubber - mostly SE Asia countries - were at war.

So the U.S. War Productions Board put out a call for American companies to try and create a manufactured rubber.

DuPont heard the call and tried unsuccessfully to create a fake rubber, without success.

One version of the DuPont rubber was some squishy stuff that pulled and stretched but clearly was not rubber.

But it sure was interesting, different!

So DuPont decided to send it to scientists and academics all over the country, asking if someone could come up with some use for the unique goop.

Everyone who received it apparently was taken with it, stretched and pulled it, but no one knew what to do with it.

Then one day, five years later - after the war - a Harvard professor was having a dinner party. He wanted a conversation starter, and he remembered the goop he had received a few years previously during the war.

So he brought it out.

All of the adults in the room were fascinated by it. Pulling it, stretching it, having fun with it.

And that is when inspiration struck.

(You never do know when inspiration will strike.)

But it did that night. An out of work ad man by the name of Peter Clevenger saw everyone playing with the stuff and he thought,

“That stuff would make . . . a great toy!”

So he scraped together $147 dollars, and soon bought the rights to the goop, along with hundreds of pounds of it from DuPont.

Clevenger then divvied it up, put little gobs of it in some plastic little eggs he had found for sale, and a bookstore in Manhattan agreed to carry it.

The goop sold out in two days.

And it went on to become one of the most successful toys of all time.

So now you know how Silly Putty was invented (and why those bolts out of the blue should probably be acted upon!) Clevenger later sold his share of the invention for $147 million.

You got this!

Your pal,

A fellow entrepreneur