The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Silly Putty Developed During World War II

From Yahoo! Games Unplugged "Five Things You Didn't Know About Silly Putty" by Mike Smith.

1.  Silly putty is/was a rite of passage for kids and developed as a result of a World War II accident.  In 1943, rubber was in short supply in the U.S. and its armed forces.  The War Production Board had engineer James Wright developing synthetic rubber.

He tried mixing boric acid with silicone oil into a soft polymer.

As a toy, it was first introduced at the International Toy Festival in 1950 and has since sold over 300 million units, weighing in at 4,500 tons of the silly stuff.

2.  It probably can't lift newsprint off newspapers anymore and they have moved away from petroleum based inks.

3.  Silly Putty has been to space.

4.  You can make your own Silly Putty with two parts of Elmer's white glue and one part liquid starch.

5.  Sometimes a liquid, sometimes a solid.

As I Recall, It Used to Come in a Little Plastic Egg for Storage.  Don't Leave It Sitting Out, As I Found Out.  --GreGen.

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