Here's a little test: in which year do you think the following remark was made?
'While we are on the Palace of Westminster, may I remind all Hon. Members that office staff should not use Tippex (sic) for hiding typing errors?'
In 2009 you might say, thinking about MPs' expenses, because Tipp-Ex could mask all sorts of underlying figures.
Actually, it was in 1993. The comment by Anthony Steen MP, was recorded in Hansard for 4 May that year. Whether he was thinking of correction tape or correction fluid, Steen obviously believed in the power of this office product, which was first sold in Germany in 1959.
In fact, Steen was making an ironic joke, using Tipp-Ex to protest against regulatory control by Brussels. 'Together with plutonium and sulphuric acid, it [Tipp-Ex] is a dangerous substance under the Control of Substances Hazards to Health Regulations 1988 and must be locked away at all times, preferably in an underground bunker.' Fortunately no one took him seriously.
The brainchild of Otto William Carls, Tipp-Ex has rescued millions of secretaries, typists, students, and office workers for the past 50 years. This indispensable office product started life as a strip of paper coated with a white compound, and it allowed people to correct a typing error in one clean stroke.
Carls began by hawking his product round offices in Frankfurt. Sales took off. Next stop, 1965, when Tipp-Ex launched the first ever bottle of correction fluid, allowing handwritten documents to be corrected. Then there were products for documents produced by photocopiers and printers, coloured correction fluids, the roller Tipp-Ex Pocket Mouse, shake n squeeze correction pens... You name it Tipp-Ex has it.
But it's not just a simple office product. There's Tipp-Ex tape art, people repairing vintage radios use it to pick out numbers on valves and other fiddly parts. Fishing fanatics say it makes a great undercoat for their brightly coloured floats, and it's even been used in operating theatres to mark out sections for surgery.
There's not much more to say, except that the name is derived from 'tippen', the German for typing and 'ex', the Latin for from and former.
