In 1881, a worker at Procter and Gamble forgot to turn off the machine that whipped a little air into the soap mixture.
He ran the “ruined” batch through production and packaging anyway instead of pulling it.
Consumers went wild. They loved the way the bar floated instead of sinking to the murky bottom of the bathtub.
Procter and Gamble decided to keep the method and make it a selling point.
Why did they call it Ivory? Procter claims he took the name from a verse in the sermon he heard that Sunday.
It was Psalms 45:8: “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, and out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad.”
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