Monday, April 17, 2023 – ONE OF OUR NECESSITIES WAS LONG TIME IN COMING

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

MONDAY, APRIL 17,  2023


ISSUE  966

THE INVENTOR OF


MODERN 

TOILET PAPER

NEW YORK ALMANACK

Albany’s Seth Wheeler: Inventor

of Modern Toilet Paper

April 11, 2023 by Peter Hess 1 Comment

Seth Wheeler was born in Chatham, Columbia County, NY on May 18th, 1838 to a successful and affluent family. His father, Alonzo Wheeler, owned Wheeler, Melick & Co. one of the foremost manufacturers of agricultural equipment; his mother was Harriet Hatch Wheeler. At the time, agriculture was the foremost industry supporting the Upstate New York economy and demand for agricultural equipment was strong. Begun in 1830, Wheeler, Melick & Co. moved to Albany in 1849.

Seth attended Albany Academy before going to work for his father’s company. Once at Wheeler, Melick & Co., Seth showed an aptitude for designing new agricultural equipment and improving on designs for equipment the company already produced.

On April 3rd, 1860, Seth married Elizabeth Alexander, daughter of William Alexander and his wife, Sarah Maria Boyd. The Wheelers had three sons and two daughters, all born in Albany.

In 1860, most Albany houses were built with an outdoor outhouse, usually located toward the back of the lot. On most city blocks a row of houses, stores or commercial buildings were lined up at the sidewalk; a row of outhouses was lined up at the rear of each property line.

The flush toilet had been invented in 1596 but did not come in to popular use until around 1900. In 1860, the word “toilet paper” would also have been unknown in most of the world, although it had been produced in two-foot by three-foot sheets for the Chinese Emperor for over 500 years.

In 1857, Joseph Gayetty produced the first commercially available toilet paper in the United States. His firm created packages of 500 individual sheets moistened with aloe. Each sheet had a watermark imprinted bearing Gayetty’s name. Gayetty’s package of 500 sheets sold for 50 cents. The product was sold as a medical product as Gayetty’s Medicated Paper, but did not sell well and Gayetty ceased production.

Brothers Edward, Clarence and Thomas Scott, (who are believed to have originally been from Saratoga County, NY), began selling some kind of toilet paper in sheets from a pushcart in Philadelphia in 1867. Again, as with Gayetty, this paper was not a big seller as most consumers felt that yesterday’s newspaper served the purpose just as well. The biggest obstacle to selling toilet paper in the early years was consumer resistance to paying for something they were used to getting for free.

In 1871, Seth Wheeler received the first U.S. patent for a machine able to manufacture perforated, rolled, wrapping paper. His machine could also imprint an insignia or wording on each sheet. Seth’s patent also mentioned that this wrapping paper machine could process manufactured rolled, perforated toilet paper.

In 1874, he organized the Rolled Wrapping Paper Company at 318 Broadway in Albany, for the manufacture of rolled paper under the patents that had been issued to him. In the days before paper bags, meat, fish, vegetables and groceries were frequently wrapped in large sheets of paper. APW Paper Company (Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company) made a stand upon which a large roll of brown paper could be held, together with a cast iron blade that suspended from the stand and could be used to tear off the paper.

In 1877, the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company was organized with Seth Wheeler as president. An early ad for a medicated version of Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper said: “this paper will be found invaluable as a preventative and cure for hemorrhoids and is the only really medicated toilet paper ever produced. Manufactured only by the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Co., Albany, N.Y., USA. Price per roll of 1000 sheets, Fifty Cents. Patented July 20, 1871; Feb. 13, 1883, July 15, 1884, Medicated.”

As acceptance of toilet paper grew, Wheeler shortened and renamed the company: the APW Paper Company. Wheeler named his brand of toilet paper “The Standard.”

In 1879, Edward and Clarence Scott founded the Scott Paper Company to sell toilet paper. The Scott toilet paper was sold in rolls that were not perforated. Due to the continuing reluctance to discuss toilet paper in public, the Scott brothers did not use their family name on the paper. For a while, the Scotts used the name “Waldorf” on their toilet paper.

In 1880, the British Perforated Paper Company sold toilet paper, but their toilet paper was not sold in rolls. It was marketed to barbers to use to wipe shaving cream off razors as they shaved customers.

The quality of early toilet paper could not have been very good as it was not until 1935 that Northern Tissue Company advertised its toilet paper as “splinter free.” The first two-ply toilet paper was marketed by St. Andrew’s Paper Mill in England in 1942.

The APW Paper Company became one of Albany’s largest and most successful manufacturing businesses. They licensed other manufacturing plants to operate under their patents. At one time over 100 manufacturing plants were operating under licenses with Seth Wheeler and the APW Paper Company.

One of Seth’s patents was for a cast iron toilet paper holder, designed for round rolls of perforated paper. This toilet paper holder was about four inches wide and about one inch high and consisted of a cast iron plate with the name “APW Paper Co.“ cast into it, with a hand cast on each side to hold a wire and wooden roller to go through the center tube of a roll of toilet paper. Another APW Paper Co. patent was for the “Wheeler Pocket Companion,” a roll of toilet paper to be carried in a container in a purse or pocket.

In 1885, the Morgan Envelope Company patented a roll of toilet paper and a toilet paper holder very similar to APW’s. The only significant difference in the new patent by Morgan was that the toilet paper roll was oval and not round. Morgan said that this made it easier to tear off the sheet. A lawsuit developed and Morgan’s patent was thrown out; the modification not being substantial enough to warrant a separate patent.

APW Paper Co. had plants in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Canada, London, Berlin, Paris, Cologne and Switzerland. Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company purchased the Sheet Harbour Lumber Company and over 100,000 acres in Nova Scotia to harvest trees for paper pulp in 1922. They later sold it to the Scott Paper Company, which had finally begun offering perforated roll toliet paper in the 1890s.

Back in the 1850s after succeeding his father as president of Wheeler, Melick & Co., Seth also formed the Wheeler Heat and Power Company of which he served as president. He was vice-president of the Cheney Piano Action Company of Castleton, Rensselaer County, NY, president of Albany County Savings Bank, and director of the State Bank of Albany. He was a member of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Free and Accepted Masons and the Fort Orange Club.

One of his sons, Edgar, was described as “an enthusiastic wheelman, charter member of the Old Albany Bicycle and Comuck [possibly comic?] clubs and, with General Robert Shaw Oliver, owned and rode the first high style wheels ridden in the city.” Seth Wheeler died in 1925 and he was cremated, but he and his family members are memorialized at Lot 6, Section 11, of Albany Rural Cemetery.

MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY

ORIGINAL RED BUS THAT WAS HERE FOR ONLY
A SHORT TIME.SINCE IT DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH POWER TO OPERATE FOR MORE THAN A FEW HOURS. IT ONLY HELD ABOUT 20 PASSENGERS.
NINA LUBLIN AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE GOT IT RIGHT.

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Illustrations, from above: Seth Wheeler’s “Wrapping or Toilet Paper Roll” Patent filed September 15, 1891; Wheeler, Mellick and Co. advertisement in The Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste (1861); portrait of Seth Wheeler; and the Liberty Paper Mills of the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company, Erie Blvd, Albany, later the location of the Huck Finn’s Warehouse.

THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

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