At Sealed Air's headquarters--a cheerless industrial park hard by Interstate 80 in Saddle Brook, N.
Sealed Air constantly works on bettering Bubble Wrap (the original patent lasted until 1985, thanks to revisions).
Bubble Wrap is a better protector than either, but Sealed Air must constantly sell potential customers on its superiority.
"'Sealed Air' does lack a little marketing pizzazz, " Hickey allows, squeezing yet again.
Its intended use, of course, is to protect items during shipping, a mission Sealed Air has pursued for 46 years.
But even Bubble Wrap needs innovation, and Sealed Air recently unveiled the latest improvement, the result of a 40-year quest: inflatable Bubble Wrap.
In 2000 Sealed Air even entered a pumpkin-dropping contest in Iowa, releasing an 815-pound pumpkin--nicknamed "Gourdzilla"--onto layers of Bubble Wrap, from a 35-foot-high crane.
Three Sealed Air engineers toiled since the late 1990s to deliver the inflatable dream of founder Fielding, who was a director of the company until 1987.
Three Sealed Air engineers had toiled since the late 1990s to deliver the inflatable dream of founder Fielding, who was a director of the company until 1987.
The biggest hurdle was that the plastic had to be strong enough to hold the positive pressure of air pumped in, says Michael Metta, Sealed Air's technology chief.
Note the companies at the top, including Sealed Air ( SEE), Harrris Corp. ( HRS) and PerkinElmer ( PKI), where the dividend payout ratio is greater than 100%.
Company legend holds that a few years after Sealed Air was founded in 1960, an innovative marketer named Frederick W. Bowers finally found the true value in the cellular bubbles.
Analysts are projecting Sealed Air to come in with earnings of 29 cents per share, 31% less than a year ago when it reported earnings of 42 cents per share.
As Mr Hickey points out, a factory that Sealed Air opened in Mexico was expected to be far less productive than one in America, but within four years had caught up.
ECONOMIST: How much longer can America keep increasing productivity?
At Sealed Air's headquarters--a cheerless industrial park hard by Interstate 80 in Saddle Brook, New Jersey--Chief William Hickey sits in a conference room with a playful grin spread across his face.
Jackson, for example, serves on the committees of Sealed Air (nyse: SEE - news - people ), U.S. Steel and Marathon Oil (nyse: MRO - news - people ), where she is chair.
To no avail: The house is now sealed and air-conditioned, deprived of its direct connection to the sea, the gardens and the Florida air.
It's a world away from carefully planned Asian cities like Singapore -- which makes it perfectly suited for visitors who don't need their lives hermetically sealed in air-conditioned shininess.
In regular wrap the sheets are sealed together to capture air in individual bubbles.
In an effort to identify plants that can filter air in sealed environments, NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America tested common plants to determine the best natural filters.
Once the home has been duly sealed, the flow of air, moisture and heat in and out of it can be carefully controlled.
In other words the iron lung is sealed and attached to bellows, which lower the air pressure inside the iron lung to create a negative pressure.
They sealed two shower curtains together, capturing some pungent Jersey air in a smattering of bubbles.
In that proceeding the air force's lawyer had brandished a sealed envelope supposedly containing evidence, though its contents were never to be seen by the accused or his defenders.
The density of helium is one-seventh that of air, delivering significant advantages to HGST's sealed-drive platform.
ENGADGET: HGST develops helium-filled, high-capacity hard drives: no, they won't float away
One answer is to use the energy to compress air, which can be squirrelled away in hermetically sealed underground caverns.
ECONOMIST: Compressed air might help to make wind power more reliable
Air is injected into the bubble rows by a squeaky pneumatic pump, then the sheets are heat-sealed on one edge.
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