Bubble Wrap was invented as wallpaper — the air bubbles were a design nobody wanted

In 1957, Swiss inventor Marc Chavannes and American engineer Alfred Fielding sealed two shower curtains together in a heat-sealing machine, trapping air between them. The resulting material had a surface of evenly spaced air bubbles. They believed this textured plastic could be sold as a new kind of wallpaper — a three-dimensional surface that would be fashionable and modern.

The wallpaper market disagreed. Nobody wanted bubble-covered walls. Undeterred, the inventors tried a second application: greenhouse insulation. The air bubbles would, they reasoned, trap heat and protect plants from frost. That market also said no. Sealed Air Corporation, the company Fielding and Chavannes founded in 1960, was running out of time and money.

In 1961, IBM was preparing to ship the IBM 1401, a fragile mainframe computer that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Conventional packaging — shredded newspaper, excelsior, foam — was not protecting the machines adequately. An IBM engineer heard about the bubbled plastic and tried it. It worked. The air pockets absorbed shock better than anything then available. IBM became Bubble Wrap's first customer.

Sealed Air grew rapidly on the back of the packaging industry. By the 1970s, Bubble Wrap was a generic term for cushioning packaging. The company later expanded into food packaging, industrial films, and the Annual Bubble Wrap Competition For Young Inventors. The product that nobody wanted as wallpaper or insulation became one of the most recognised packaging materials in the world.