Bette Nesmith Graham was a troublesome teenager, and dropped out of high school to marry her first serious boyfriend, 24-year-old Warren Nesmith. He abandoned her after fathering their son, and she worked as a secretary and commercial artist while raising their son alone. She was not a good typist, and grew frustrated that there was no easy method to correct typographical errors on the bank's electric typewriters, so with help from her son's high school chemistry teacher she invented a thin, quick-drying paint to cover typographical errors. She brought a bottle of the fluid and a small paintbrush to work, and began painting over her mistakes, then retyping the correct characters. She sold her "Mistake-Out" mix to co-workers, preparing it in her kitchen and bottling it in the garage, and in 1956 she incorporated the business as the Mistake-Out Company. In 1957, after the product was mentioned in a trade magazine called The Office, she received a large order from General Electric, and hired her first employees. Later renamed the Liquid Paper Company, sales of her correction fluid first topped $1M in 1967. In 1979 she retired, after selling the business to Gillette for $47.5M and establishing the Gihon Foundation, a Bible-based charity that helps support women artists and entrepreneurs. Her son, Mike Nesmith, helped mix and bottle Mistake-Out during the company's early years, and later played guitar for The Monkees.
