Whoa. Silly Putty is weird.
Silly Putty's birth began as an accident. During WWII, rubber materials became scarce after Japan invaded territories that exported rubber goods and so the government funded research to find a synthetic rubber compound.
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A General Electric engineer named James Wright is generally credited as the creator of Silly Putty, making the discovery of the substance in 1943 when he combined boric acid and silicone oil.
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General Electric then sent out the Silly Putty prototype to several engineers to see if they could find any use for the material. No one did.
In 1949, a man named Peter Hodgson began marketing the bouncy goo as a toy, packaging small amount in the plastic egg casings you still see today.
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In 1950, The New Yorker ran an article about Silly Putty and Hodgson was flooded with orders — 250,000 of them. When Hodgson died, he left behind an estate of $140 million.
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