Brillo Pad
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Brillo Pad is a trade name for a scouring pad, used for cleaning dishes, and made from steel wool impregnated with soap.
Andy Warhol, famous for making pop art out of commercial designs, built a statue replicating a stack of Brillo shipping cartons, made out of wood rather than cardboard.
One of the simplest inventions, using existing and easily sourced materials, has helped millions in keeping cookware clean- and therefore free of germs. How many people might have succumbed to numerous diseases had the combined scouring effect of wire wool with the cleansing power of soap not been combined in 1913 is not known, but reasoned speculation suggests this product has definitely saved lives.
It came at a time when the introduction of aluminium pots and pans -replacing cast iron- was creating a quiet revolution in the kitchen. But easily blackened by coal fires, the shiny newness of the cookware didn't last long.
A cookware peddler and his brother-in-law, a jeweller, approached New York lawyer Milton Loeb for assistance in protecting their invention- made of German fine steel wool and jeweller's rouge. But Loeb did much more, flinging himself into the pan scouring business and coming up with the Brillo trademark -from the Latin for 'bright'.
Patented in 1913, by 1917 the Brillo Manufacturing Company were selling packaged boxes of six pads and a separate bar of soap. It was only in the 1930s that the soap was contained within the pad. The brightness of the world's pots and pans was now assured.
Brillo Pad is also Private Eye's nickname for Andrew Neil.