Typing fluid

The invention of typing correction fluid is credited to Bette Nesmith Graham, the mother of The Monkees band member Mike Nesmith. A divorcee, Bette became a secretary at Texas Bank and Trust to support herself and her son Michael in 1951. She was a poor typist and one day, she brought with her to work a small watercolor brush and a bottle of white tempera paint to cover her typos.

Graham secretly used her white correction paint for five years sharing it with other secretaries, She made some improvements with help from her son's chemistry teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas.

Graham eventually began marketing her typewriter correction fluid as "Mistake Out" in 1956. This led to her business Liquid Paper Co. which she sold 25 years later to the Gillette Company in 1979 for $47.5 million with royalties.

Liquid Paper products on display at The Women's Museum in Dallas, Texas

With the advent of colored paper stocks for office use, correction fluid manufacturers began producing their product in various colors, particularly reds, blues, and yellows, so that corrections made on these papers would be less visually invasive.