Liquid Paper

This stuff, when it came on the scene, was considered a miracle. You could cover over mistakes on typed, or even hand-written documents, done on plain paper, as opposed to sticky, blurry Corrasable Bond. The first batches of LP were alcohol-based, so that they would dry quickly. You dabbed the stuff onto the paper, maybe blew upon it if you were in a hurry, then typed your corrected text. Of course, the stuff was not easy to work with, and typewriters all over town soon were covered with splashes of white paint, as were the fingers of many a typist. Another disadvantage of this LP was that the chemical rapidly evaporated in the bottle, and you had to add thinner (sold seperately). If the LP was too thick, your corrections looked like they were typed on sandpaper.

Liquid Paper then came out with a water-based compound that was certainly easier to clean up, but took forever to dry. Most of us shunned it. They also had varieties of LP made especially for handwriting, and in different colors.

A major competitor to LP was something called Wite-Out. Some of you will recall the old "blonde joke" -

Q: How do you know if a blonde used your word processor?
A: There's Wite-Out on the screen.