When Harley Procter decided to develop a creamy white soap to compete with imported castile soaps, he asked his cousin, chemist James Gamble, to formulate the product. One day after the soap when into production, a factory worker (who remains anonymous) forgot to switch off the master mixing machine when he went to lunch and too much air was whipped into a batch of soap. Consumers, delighted by the floating soap, demanded more, and from then on, Procter and Gamble gave all white soap an extra-long whipping.

Harley Procter, considering a long list of new names for his white soap, was inspired one Sunday morning in church when the pastor read Psalm 45: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad."

A chemist's analysis of Ivory soap indicated that 56/100 of the ingredients did not fall into the category of pure soap. Procter subtracted from 100, and wrote the slogan "99-44/100% Pure" which first appeared in Ivory's advertising in 1882. "It Floats" was added to Ivory's slogan in 1891.
Ivory Soap is the best-selling soap in America because the air-laden bars dissolve twice as fast as other brands, compelling consumers to buy twice as much.

Approximately 30 billion cakes of Ivory Soap had been manufactured by 1990.

"Ivory" is a registered trademark of Procter & Gamble.

And here I had always thought that 99-44/100% pure meant that only 0.56% was not pure soap. I haven't used Ivory since my mother (I was told) bathed me with it as a youngster.

Gilly Harold,

Info about soap always reminds me of one of my favor novelty songs, "Grandma's Lye Soap."

The actual song is longer, but I remember the following two verses:

Mrs. O'Mally down in the valley
Suffered from ulcers I understand
She swallowed a cake of Grandma's lye soap
And now has the cleanest ulcers in the land!

Little Herman and Brother Thurman
Had an aversion to washing their ears
Grandma scrubbed them with her lye soap
And they haven't heard a word in years.

Cordially,

Russ

Years ago, there was a Gluyas Williams cartoon (he illustrated the work of Robert Benchley) about a bar of Ivory that SANK! Some while ago, P&G ran a contest for consumers to find the Ivory bar that sank, no doubt inspired by the Williams cartoon. tjoeb};>