Did it take years of experimenting to get that soap to float? Not exactly. Ivory Soap floated by accident. For years the Procter & Gamble company had been developing a formula for a high quality soap at an affordable price. In January 1878, they finally perfected the formula. They called it simply "White Soap," and began production. Several months later the accident occurred.
A large batch of White Soap was mixing when a workman at the factory went to lunch and left the machinery running. When he returned, he found that air had been worked into the mixture. he decided not to discard the batch of soap because of such a small error, and he poured the soap into the frames. The soap hardened and it was cut, packaged, and shipped.
A few weeks later, letters began arriving at Procter & Gamble asking for more of the soap that floated. The workman's error had turned into a selling point! Harley Procter came up with the name "Ivory" while listening to a bible reading at church one morning in 1879.
