CBS Sunday Morning on October 16, 2016: who invented the bumper sticker and "when" was it invented?

Within the show, one had Martha Teichner doing a piece on "bumper stickers" titled -- Bumper stickers: A vehicle for political expression --. There was a sort of inventorship matter:


But then came World War II, and along with technology (including day-glo colors) and adhesive paper. It wasn’t long before somebody put them together.

That somebody was Forest Gill, of Kansas City, Missouri.

“He put the idea of the bright colors and the sticky paper together to come up with a bumper sticker,” said Gill’s son-in-law, Mark Gilman, the chairman of Gill Studios, now located in Lenexa, Kansas. “His innovation was to make the bumper sign self-sticking.”

America’s post-war love affair with the automobile guaranteed that these traveling billboards got around. But tourist attractions -- not political campaigns -- were the original users.




Not likely that Day-glo colors were used on bumper stickers in or around 1946; from an ACS publication


In 1946, the Switzer Brothers ended their agreements with Continental and founded Switzer Brothers, Inc. (now Day-Glo Color Corp.), in Cleveland. Flaw detection products continued to be a large portion of their product lines, but they also expanded their research to improve daylight fluorescent pigments for commercial uses.

After a series of developments in the field, a milestone came in 1957 with the patent for a new process for producing daylight fluorescent pigments. Combining the fluorescent dyes with a new class of polymers and then milling the composition to an appropriate particle size produced material that behaved like traditional organic and inorganic pigments in printing techniques. These new pigments could be used as traditional paint and inks and had sufficient light stability to be used outdoors.

Growth in the use of fluorescent pigments for marketing and packaging took off following the War. The company made inroads by marketing their products—DayGlo brand silk-screen inks, paint, and papers—to advertisers. Their first big break in packaging came in 1959 in an application that’s still known by its DayGlo colors today: Tide® detergent. Fluorescent boxes of Tide were soon on display on grocery shelves nationwide, and fluorescent colors began to appear on an increasing number of consumer products.



link: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/dayglo.html#further-reading

**It is interesting to note that the combination of self-adhesive and Day-glo appeared in a 2012 NYTimes piece:


Gill seized on two new technologies ­ — self-adhesive paper and Day-Glo paint — and combined them into a novelty item perfectly adapted for America’s highways. By the 1960 presidential election, bumper stickers were everywhere, rivaling buttons as a favorite way for voters to declare their intentions.


link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/who-made-that-bumper-sticker.html?_r=0

As noted, Day-Glo was not ready for "outdoor" usage (as on bumper stickers) until after 1957.

**In the "older" days of "CBS Sunday Morning", one might have expected this story to have been done by Bill Geist or Mo Rocca.

Almanac did the be-heading of Marie Antoinette.

Jane Pauley did a puff profile on Sarah Jessica Parker.

S. C. Johnson of Racine was discussed. Remember Kringles of Racine? The piece on S.C. Johnson touched on the "research tower," and thus obliquely on inventorship:


Next door is the 15-story Research Tower that Wright also designed. It opened in 1950. Its odd skeleton can best be seen at dusk.

“It has a central core that’s 13 feet in diameter, like the trunk of a tree” said Greg Anderegg, who used to work for SC Johnson and later helped with the tower’s restoration. “And all of the floors are hung off of that central core like the limbs of a tree.”

[Frank Lloyd] Wright again wanted to allow in natural light, but instead of just plates of glass, he decided to use glass tubes instead -- 17 miles of them.

“We hand-cleaned every one of them -- I might point out that we used Windex to do that!” Anderegg laughed. “And they look sparkling and look great.”

It now looks much as it did when Bob O’Brien worked here. He said, “It was always bright. But you just felt like you’re working in a snow globe.”

Despite having to wear sunglasses while formulating his products, he loved it.

“Formulation is an art. And I would come into work, and these benches in this laboratory that was our canvas, a canvas that Frank Lloyd Wright built, right? So you come in here and you just couldn’t help but feel inspired. There was just the energy.”

The Tower became integral to SC Johnson’s success -- even part of its ad campaigns. It was the womb for some of the company’s most recognizable brands, from Glade air freshener to a bug’s worst nightmare. Raid was developed by Sam Johnson, Fisk’s father. It killed bugs but not plants, which at the time was revolutionary. But it was also the first of Sam Johnson’s string of products that didn’t contain any wax.


link: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-family-history-at-sc-johnson/

Moment of nature did whale sharks near Isla Mujeres, which is near Cancun. Not mentioned was
MUSA (Museo Subacuatico de Arte) also nearby. Recall the December 30, 2012 Sunday Morning wherein Mo Rocca does "Sunken Treasures" in Cancun, Mexico. [ http://ipbiz.blogspot.bg/2012/12/cbs-sunday-morning-on-december-30-2012.html ]