【精英翻譯】的部落格

Bubble Wrap—The World’s Most Popular Packaging

氣泡紙：最受歡迎的包裝材

精英翻譯社轉自https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0058/356824/web/

In 1957, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes created something that would change the shipping industry for good and make e-commerce stores like Amazon possible: Bubble Wrap. It has been used by companies and people around the world for packing and popping ever since. The trapped little air bubbles that make up a section of Bubble Wrap were in fact invented by chance. When the men fed two pieces of a plastic shower curtain through a heat-sealing machine, they were trying to create a type of wallpaper. They were naturally let down with the results, but they didn’t give up. They thought of more than 400 different uses for their soft, air-filled material, such as for use in greenhouse walls, but none brought them much success. Then, in 1960, IBM saw how useful Bubble Wrap could be in protecting its new, very expensive computers during shipping. A deal was made. By the mid-1960s, Fielding and Chavannes’s packing material had become a shipping essential, which today protects millions of packages a year from damage.

一九五七年，阿爾弗雷德．菲爾丁和馬克．沙瓦納發明了一種永遠改變航運業並讓亞馬遜這樣的電子商務店家成為可能的東西：氣泡紙。從那之後，它就一直被世界各地的公司和人們用來包裝和製造啵啵聲。構成氣泡紙的一個個存留的小氣泡，其實是偶然之下發明的。這兩個人將兩塊塑膠浴簾放進熱封機時，他們原本是試圖創造出一種壁紙。他們自然對結果感到失望，但兩人並沒有放棄。他們為這種柔軟、充滿空氣的材料想出了四百多種不同用途，像是用在溫室的牆壁，但沒有一種帶給他們太大的成功。然後，在一九六○年，IBM（國際商業機器公司）看到了氣泡紙在運輸過程中對保護非常昂貴的新電腦很有用。一項交易成交了。到了一九六○年代中期，菲爾丁和沙瓦納的包裝材已成為運輸必需品，這種包裝材現今每年保護數百萬個包裹免於受損壞。