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Bette Clair Graham (March 23, 1924 – May 12, 1980) was an American typist, commercial artist, and the inventor of white-out. She was also the mother of musician and producer Michael Nesmith of The Monkees.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Bette Nesmith Graham )〕 ==Biography== Graham was born Bette Clair McMurray in Dallas, Texas to Jesse McMurray, an automotive supply company manager, and Christine Duval.〔Texas Birth Index, "Robert Micheal Nesmith" born 1945, retrieved from Ancestry.com, lists his mother's full birthname.〕 She was raised in San Antonio and graduated from Alamo Heights High School.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Gihon Foundation, 1793 Catalina Street, Sand City, CA 93955 )〕 She married Warren Audrey Nesmith (1919–1984) before he left to fight in World War II. While he was overseas she had a child (Robert Michael Nesmith, born December 30, 1942). After Warren Nesmith returned home, they divorced (1946). In the early 1950s, her father died, leaving some property in Dallas to Bette. She, her mother, Michael, and her sister Yvonne moved there. To support herself as a single mother, she worked as a secretary at Texas Bank and Trust. She eventually attained the position of the executive secretary, the highest position open at that time to women in the industry. It was difficult to erase mistakes made by early electric typewriters, which caused problems. In order to make extra money she used her talent painting holiday windows at the bank. She realized, as she said, "with lettering, an artist never corrects by erasing, but always paints over the error. So I decided to use what artists use. I put some tempera water-based paint in a bottle and took my watercolor brush to the office. I used that to correct my mistakes." Graham secretly used her white correction paint for five years, making some improvements with help from her son's chemistry teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas. Some bosses admonished her against using it, but coworkers frequently sought her "paint out." She eventually began marketing her typewriter correction fluid as "Mistake Out" in 1956. The name was later changed to Liquid Paper when she began her own company. Mistake Out started the 1960s operating at a small loss, with Nesmith's home doubling as company headquarters. As the product became an indispensable tool of the secretarial trade, Nesmith relocated production and shipping from her kitchen to a 10x26-foot portable metal structure in her backyard, where packaging, shipping, and production were centered. In 1962 Bette Nesmith married Robert Graham, who joined her in running the company.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Bette Nesmith Graham )〕 They divorced in 1975.〔(County Historian website )〕 In 1979 she sold Liquid Paper to the Gillette Corporation for USD $47.5 million. At the time, her company employed 200 people and made 25 million bottles of Liquid Paper per year. Bette Nesmith died May 12, 1980, at the age of 56, in Richardson, Texas. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bette Nesmith Graham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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