Who invented cling wrap (glad wrap), and how did it come about?
Yes, as you had suspected-it was a complete mistake…As with many great discoveries, plastic wrap’s history is built on a lab error. Plastic wrap was invented in 1953 by a scientist who was trying to make a hard plastic cover for his car; his experiment was completely unsuccessful but he then found the usefulness of plastic wrap which he happened to create instead. The original cling wrap material was Saran,(Hence the name Saran wrap) the commercial name for polyvinylidene chloride (PVdC). The material was given approval for direct dry food contact and for paperboard coating for contact with fatty and aqueous foods.(In otherwords-it was safe to cover foods that people would be injesting) In Australia, the original cling wrap material was polyethylene with a “stickifier” in the form of edible gum.
