- History's Newsstand Blog - https://blog.rarenewspapers.com -

They put it in print… The floating soap surfaces…

It’s interesting to find articles reporting the very beginning of some of the more commonplace items in present-day life, but which were given little consequence at the time. A good example is a rather inconspicuous article in an April [1]1, 1882 issue of “Scientific American [1].

Blog-4-29-2015-Ivory-Soap [2]Titled simply “Floating Soap”, the article includes: “…the peculiarity of the soap they were using. When one of the men had soaped himself he would drop the soap into the water and it would ‘bob up serenely from below’ like a cork, ready for the next man to pick it up…The soap was called ‘ivory’, presumably on account of being of a creamy white color like ivory…We are pleased to note that Messrs. Proctor and Gamble, of Cincinnati, have at last discovered how to make a soap that will float & at the same time be durable & serviceable, & reasonably cheap.”

Ivory soap remains today–some 133 years later–a very common product on store shelves around the world. And it still floats.