Earl Tupper

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Earl Silas Tupper (July 28, 1907–October 5, 1983) was the inventor of Tupperware, an airtight plastic container for storing food.

He was born on a farm in Berlin, New Hampshire, USA. After school, Tupper began a landscaping and nursery business until the Great Depression forced it into bankruptcy. He then got a job with the DuPont Chemical Company.

Using inflexible pieces of polyethylene slag given to him by DuPont, Tupper purified the slag and molded it to create lightweight, non-breakable containers, cups, bowls, plates, and even gas masks that were used in World War II. He later designed liquid-proof, airtight lids by duplicating the lid of a paint can.

Tupper later founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in 1938, and in 1946, he introduced Tupper Plastics to hardware and department stores. Based on a marketing strategy developed by Brownie Wise in the early 1950s, Tupperware was withdrawn from sale in retail stores and Tupperware "parties" soon became popular in homes within the United States and abroad, the first example of "party-plan" marketing which has since been successfully emulated by many others. After a falling-out with Wise, resulting in her 1958 dismissal, Tupper soon sold the Tupperware organization for $16 million to Dart Industries, which still operates it. Shortly afterwards, he divorced his wife, gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes, and bought himself an island in Central America. The year after he died, 1984 his patent expired.