Today, people will have panic attacks if they realize that they forgot to apply deodorant before heading out.
And anyone who has experienced kneeling in line behind a man in need of the product will attest to its necessity.
The entirely first deodorant, called Mum, was trademarked in 1888. The first antiperspirant appeared in 1903. There is a wealth of online information about what people did before the emergence of these products, however 1 thing stands out. It took some slick advertising to convince people from the Victorian era that they smelled bad. Back then, that odor of the unwashed guy in the check-out line was considered “manly”. In 1912, a high universityer from Cincinnati named Edna Murphy, a substance (later dubbed Odorono) that his surgeon father had invented to keep his hands sweat-free in the operating room, and a boiling summer time convention in Atlantic City helped propel the deodorant industry into the multi-billion dollar corporation that it is today. The early 20th century also saw the emergence of air conditioning that began as a way to refrigerate food products however soon moved into the movie theatres and later to homes and most businesses. I just wonder how the executives of Heating and Air Conditioning companies and deodorant manufacturers got along with each other. A cool comfortable environment is the bane of those who promote deodorants so there may have been some friction at the corporate level. More likely is that the marketeers from both sides worked together to convince another generation of Americans that not only did they smell bad, however their houses and cars also did too. Thus, the multi-billion-dollar air freshener industry was born after its invention in 1948.