During World War II, chemists at Dow Corning and General Electric independently made a bouncing silicone putty that failed as rubber, survived as a party trick, and became Silly Putty when Peter Hodgson packed it into plastic eggs in 1950

In 1943, GE engineer James Wright dropped boric acid into silicone oil hoping to synthesize wartime rubber. He got a pink putty that stretched, bounced, and lifted ink off newsprint — and the recipe that reached toy stores in 1949 is still the recipe inside e…