You really have to appreciate the little things in life. You really don't appreciate toilet paper until you don't have it. Then you think about the alternatives. It is certain, that toilet paper has not been on the world since forever. When cave people could not stop in some supermarket, they had to help themselves by that what nature provided them.Early American settlers used everything from leaves to corncobs to wipe their bottoms. They learned to stay away from Poison Ivy really quick. French royalty wiped with lace. The Vikings used discarded wool. On Hawai ...view middle of the document...
But the credit really belongs to Sir John Harington, a godson of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1857, New York entrepreneur Joseph C. Gayetty manufactured the first packaged pre-moistened sheets of bathroom tissue called "therapeutic paper" in packs of 500 for 50 cents. In 1890, Scott Paper introduced toilet paper on a roll. Over the years, a variety of toilet paper has evolved such as 2-ply paper and quilted paper.Today, the U.S. toilet paper market is worth about $2.4 billion a year. America is the world's leader in toilet paper. Consider this: The average American uses 57 sheets of toilet paper a day and more than 20,805 sheets a year. America is the biggest producer, and biggest consumer in the world. While foreigners might laugh at our cars and shoddy consumer goods, most of the world agrees we're world-class when it comes to wiping. The only toilet paper scare was in 1973, when Johnny Carson made a joke about the United States facing an acute shortage of toilet paper. This prompted viewers to run out to stores and begin hoarding. Carson apologized the next day for causing the scare and retracted his quote.Even though the main idea for toilet paper was wiping your bottom, today it has other purposes. Around Halloween, our trees are filled by its streaming decorations. It's no wonder that when the Scott company put paper on a roll in 1890, the world changed.
