Plastics News Europe - October 2019 - 5

design landmark

o crime drama would be without it: the whiteboard with
scrawls in different coloured
inks showing the connections between victims and suspects, the trail
of transactions that ended up with a
body in a ditch discovered by an early
morning dog walker. So it's no surprise that a dry wipe whiteboard
would turn up in the second season
of David Fincher's drama-based-ontrue-events "Mindhunter" as its protagonists struggle to find the connections between a series of unsolved
murders. Fincher is known for his eye
for detail - the replica 1976 Sony TC510-2 tape recorder used in the title
sequence of the series was handcrafted because a box-fresh example of
the original couldn't be found. But
would the FBI have used a dry wipe
whiteboard in 1980?
The first whiteboards were introduced in the late 1950s and early
1960s. As with so many inventions,
it's unclear who actually invented
the whiteboard. One contender is
Albert Stallion who worked for a
manufacturer of architectural cladding. He proposed that the compa-

ny's enamelled steel sheets could be
used to make whiteboards, which he
marketed as Magiboards. More pertinent to our interests is Martin Heit
who developed the first plastic
whiteboard in the late 1950s. His
company, Haspel Heit, marketed it as
the Plasti-Slate but a losses resulting
from a fire at a trade show in Chicago forced Heit to sell his patents to
marker pen manufacturer Dri Mark.
Neither the Magiboard or the Plasti-Slate had the function of the whiteboards we know today. A 1975 patent would make whiteboards a whole
lot more practical. The early whiteboards needed to be cleaned with a
damp cloth or damp tissue. It was the
invention by Jerry Woolf of the dry
erasable marker, or dry wipe marker,
that made the whiteboard's fortune.
Erasing scribbles, scrawls and text
with just a wipe of a board eraser or
paper towel, made the whiteboard a
much more practical proposition.
Today whiteboards are in most offices and classrooms throughout the
world. Some are made from PET, others from melamine and some are still
made of enamelled steel. But there's

(1975)

Whether catching a killer or teaching algebra,
the whiteboard is indispensable

another twist: although the dry wipe
marker was invented in 1975, dry
wipe whiteboards didn't really take off
until the 1990s, when Dri Mark started marketing them aggressively to the
education sector, capitalising on
health fears about dust from chalkboards. So would the FBI have used
one in 1980? Perhaps we should ask
Mulder and Sculley to investigate?

Design Landmark
is researched and
written by James
Snodgrass

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octoBER 2019

dry wipe whiteboard
N

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Plastics News Europe - October 2019

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