Oddly enough, Hawthorne has a crazy history with bubble wrap!
In 1957, two Hawthorne residents Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes, sealed two shower curtains together, creating a small amount of air bubbles. Fielding and Chavannes tried to market this invention as wallpaper. While the wallpaper plan failed, the team sold it as greenhouse insulation.
Just a few years later in 1960, Bubble Wrap was branded by Sealed Air Corporation (founded by Fielding and Chavannes). The bubble wrap’s protective usage feature wasn’t recognized until a year later in 1961.
As a packaging material, bubble wrap had its first client, IBM! IBM used bubble wrap to protect the IBM 1401 computer during a shipment. The boys were inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1993. In fact, Sealed Air celebrated bubble wrap’s 50th birthday in January 2010!
Here comes the cool part, in 2013 Hawthorne High School was recognized by Guinness World Records for the most people popping bubble wrap simultaneously. 366 students here at Hawthorne High School did this! It took the students only 2 minutes to pop as much bubble wrap as possible and more than 8,000 square feet of the packing material. They were first to hold the record before it was surpassed the following year in 2014.
Before you question “why would they waste their time on popping bubble wrap?” The bubble popping event was held to celebrate the 13th annual Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day and raise money for Sandy Hook Elementary School after they experienced a mass shooting in 2012.
This is the link if you are interested in watching HHS students set a Guinness World Record…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxcongr7oHs