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Alfred W Fielding 1917 - 1994

Alfred William Fielding of Kirkland, King County, WA was born on August 31, 1917 in Hackensack, Bergen County, New Jersey United States, and died at age 76 years old on July 7, 1994 in Kirkland, King County, WA. Alfred Fielding was buried at George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, Bergen County, NJ.

Alfred William Fielding

Kirkland, King County, WA 98033

August 31, 1917

Hackensack, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States

July 7, 1994

Kirkland, King County, Washington, United States

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Alfred W Fielding Alfred Fielding (1917 - 1994)

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Alfred William Fielding's History: 1917 - 1994

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Introduction

Alfred William Fielding was born to William Howard "Willie" Fielding (1876-1952) and Wilhelmina "Minnie" Gluckler (1878-1952). He had siblings Harold R. Fielding (1909-1986) and Frank Howard Fielding (1897-1969). Alfred Fielding married Virginia Ida Labagh (1920-2016) on June 24, 1946 in New Jersey and they had one child. In the 1920 census, Alfred was listed as 2 years old and living with his parents and brothers Frank and Harold in Hackensack Ward 5, Bergen, New Jersey. In the 1930 census, he was listed as age 12, living at 144 Fairmount Ave Hackensack, and attending school. Both of his parents were born in New York and he was living with his parents and brother Harold. In the 1940 census, Alfred was 22 and living with his parents at the same address as the 1930 census. His occupation was listed as "instructor" and he had completed 4 years of college. After graduating from Stevens Institute of Technology and receiving a masters degree, he became a teacher there. After inventing "bubble wrap" with partner Marc A Chavannes, he and Marc founded their own company. See Did you know Bubble Wrap was invented right here in Hawthorne? Dec 23 2018. His obituary says that he was survived by his wife, their son, and 2 grandchildren. See Alfred W Fielding: Obituary.
08/31

1917

Birthday

August 31, 1917

Birthdate

Hackensack, Bergen County, New Jersey United States

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

Alfred was Caucasian. Both of his parents were born in New York.
Nationality & Locations

Born and raised in New Jersey, Alfred lived most of his life in New Jersey. After he retired, he moved to Kirkland Washington and he died in Seattle, Washington at the age of 76/ He is buried in George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, New Jersey.
Early Life & Education

Alfred was educated in the Hackensack New Jersey public school system. He completed 4 years of college at Stevens Institute (1939), obtaining a degree in mechanical engineering. He earned a Masters degree in 1943 from Stevens Institute. And in 1986, Stevens awarded him an honorary degree.
Religious Beliefs

His funeral was a graveside service.
Professional Career

Alfred was an instructor in engineering at Stevens Institute. He co-created, along with Marc A Chavannes, "bubble wrap" which led the pair to create Sealed Air Corp, a company based in Saddle Brook. He was the executive vice president and director of the company until he retired in 1987.
Personal Life & Family

Alfred is in the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. He married Virginia Ida Labagh (1920-2016) in 1946 in New Jersey and they had one child and he was survived by his wife, their son, and 2 grandchildren.
07/7

1994

Death

July 7, 1994

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

Kirkland, King County, Washington United States
Death location

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Gravesite & Burial

mm/dd/yyyy
Funeral date
George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey 07652, United States
Burial location
Obituary

Alfred Fielding; created bubble wrap Services will be held in Paramus on Friday for Alfred W. Fielding, immortalized in the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame for his role in creating bubble-wrap packaging material. The former Allendal resident died Wednesday in Seattle at age 77. With his business partner, Marc A. Chavannes, Mrs. Fielding created the now-ubiquitous plastic sheets of air bubbles in 1957. The material, credited with ushering in a new era in packaging materials, led the pair to found Sealed Air Corp., a multinational company based in Saddle Brook. Mr. Fielding served as executive vice president and director of the corporation until his retirement in 1987. He lived Kirkland, Washington at the time of his death. "Al Fielding was the quintessential inventive engineer, able to zero in to the core of a complex problem and find an elegant, simple solution," said Harold J. Raveche, president of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken Mr. Fielding graduated from Stevens in 1939 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He earned a master's degreee there four years later and received an honorary degree from the college in 1986. Before inventing bubble wrap, Mr. Fielding also worked as an engineering instructor at the college. He developed and built the product into a household name, creating a safe, secure packaging system that saved companies millions of dollars in packaging costs, college officials said. A graduate of the Hackensack public schools, Mr. Fielding was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame last year and also was honored by the Newcomen Society in 1982. In a statement released on Monday, the president of Sealed Air said Mr. Fieldings inventions were the foundation for the development of a range of new packaging materials. "Al was an inspiration and friend to all of us at Sealed Air who had the privilege of knowing and working with him," said T.J. Dermot Dunphy. "His spirit of leadership and innovation furnished the cornerstone of Sealed Air's growth as a global company, and stands as a monument to his imagination, courage, and skills, as well as his faith in the free-enterprise system." Mr. Fielding is survived by his wife, son, and two grandchildren. Burial will follow a graveside ceremony at 1 p.m. Friday at George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus. Memorial contributions may be made to the Stevens Institute of Technology. - The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey) Tuesday, July 12, 1994, on page 32.

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Alfred W Fielding lived 2 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 76.

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2 Memories, Stories & Photos about Alfred

Kathy Pinna

32.8k+ favorites

01/27/2021

Alfred W Fielding

A photo of Alfred Fielding, co-inventor of bubble wrap (which began as an effort to create 3D wallpaper

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Kathy Pinna

32.8k+ favorites

01/27/2021

Did you know Bubble Wrap was invented right here in Hawthorne? Dec 23 2018

It was an impish sort of way how Howard Fielding, then only a boy, popped his first bubble on a sheet of Bubble Wrap when his father was not looking.

Luckily for him, his family and the entire civilized world, many more bubbles would pop in the years and decades to come. But Fielding was one of the first people to hold a sheet of Bubble Wrap in his hands, press one of its tiny air-filled sacs between his thumb and forefinger and listen to it burst.

"I remember being the first beta tester for Bubble Wrap," said Fielding, now 63, a retired journalist living in Southbury, Connecticut.

Fielding's father, the late Alfred Fielding, co-invented Bubble Wrap in 1957 and brought sheets of it home to Wayne for his only child to play with.

Fielding said it was like a "dirty little secret" of his to pop the bubbles — not because his father told him not to, but he knew his inventor dad never would pop them himself.

No one knew at the time how valuable that curious-looking creation would be, or how it eventually would revolutionize the method by which goods are packaged and shipped.

Bubble Wrap and the little machine shop the elder Alfred Fielding operated on Wagaraw Road in Hawthorne now is a multibillion-dollar enterprise, called Sealed Air Corp.

E-commerce has played a big part in the company's growth over the past decade.

The largest e-commerce company in the world, Amazon.com Inc., shipped 5 billion packages to its Prime customers last year, according to published reports. There is a "99.9 percent chance" that anyone who received a package from Amazon — or any e-commerce distributor — this holiday season also found in the box a Sealed Air product.

"The holiday effect is huge," said Chad Stephens, vice president of global innovation and development for the Product Care division of Sealed Air. "When most of the world is ramping down, we're ramping up."

Invented in Hawthorne
Fielding, an engineer schooled at Stevens Institute of Technology, was running a modest shop on the industrial corridor that parallels the Passaic River when he hooked up in the mid- to late-1950s with a Swiss experimenter named Marc Chavannes.

Their goal, Fielding said, was to make the first 3D wallpaper. It had nothing to do with packaging — not yet, anyway.

"The idea was ingenious," said T.J. Dermot Dunphy, 86, who was brought on to help manage Sealed Air in the late 1960s. "The founders had no idea it was going to be a packaging company. They just had this idea."

Dunphy, who went on to play a vital role in the rise of the company as its chief executive officer for 30 years, described the Frick-and-Frack bond between Chavannes and Fielding as symbiotic. They fed off each other's strengths, he said.

Chavannes was the "main creative force" behind the invention, Dunphy said, but he lacked technical qualifications, expertise that Fielding had covered. "They figured they were inventing the next nylon," he said. "That was their mission — their North Star."

But the wallpaper idea was a flop.

When Dunphy became the company's chief executive in 1971, he found a consultant's report in the drawer of his desk that listed 400 ideas for how to use the invention. "Of course, the real business was packaging material, and that's what it was from Day One," he said.

Stars aligned for the inventors in 1960, when IBM — the IT giant, based in Armonk, New York — needed something to protect its computers from being damaged during shipment.

The duo had their first major customer, and Sealed Air was established.

Hawthorne Mayor Richard Goldberg said he is proud that Bubble Wrap was invented within borough limits.

"I, like most people, always have fun popping the Bubble Wrap," said the mayor, who moved to the borough as a child in 1959. "I just missed the invention, but I've been celebrating ever since."

The current owner of the property where Fielding's shop was, Robert Scully of Scully's Ice R&L Co. Inc., at Passaic Avenue and Wagaraw Road, was familiar with much of the lore involving the beginning of Sealed Air, but he said he did not know it had happened on his land.

Scully, who retired as the borough's chief of police in 2013, said the topic of Bubble Wrap has never come up with his customers.

Growing pains moved Sealed Air from Hawthorne to Fair Lawn and, then, to Saddle Brook. Its home base for the past two years has been Charlotte, North Carolina.

Fielding said his father and Chavannes died in 1994.

Both men are enshrined in the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame.

Expansion and legacy
Sealed Air, which employs 15,000 people in 122 countries, reported $4.5 billion in sales last year, according to a company spokeswoman. It has been ranked on the Fortune 500 list of top revenue-generating corporations in the U.S. for 21 years.

Stephens said the rise of e-commerce has helped to build the company, but that it is "not totally dependent" on it.

"Around the holidays, even in the past, whether there was e-commerce or not, as people have globalized and moved outside of the villages they grew up in, people send things," Stephens said.

"I believe, if I were to look back, you'd see a spike in shipments," he went on, referring to Sealed Air's fourth-quarter gains. "E-commerce made it more of an exponential spike."

An Amazon spokeswoman would not provide information for this story. Other e-commerce companies, including eBay and Walmart, did not answer requests for information.

Over the years, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, Sealed Air made several strategic acquisitions to position the company for further expansion in the 21st century, Stephens said. Of particular note, he said, was the purchase in 1998 of the Cryovac packaging business from W.R. Grace & Co., based in Columbia, Maryland. The brand, which was around for 50 years by the time Sealed Air bought it, is shrink-film for perishable food.

Still, the most widely recognized product emerging out of Sealed Air plants is Bubble Wrap and its offspring, air pillows, which customers inflate themselves by using small machines that the company also sells.

Sealed Air has cornered the market.

Stephens said the company is "three times larger" than its biggest competitor. "You name the account," he said, "you got a 99.9 percent chance that they're a customer of ours."

Bubble Wrap has become so ubiquitous in American culture that there is a Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, celebrated on the last Monday in January. There also is a display of it as part of MoMA's online art collection. And, at the elder Alfred Fielding's alma mater, a room in the admissions center is dedicated to the invention, said Thania Benios, director of public relations for Stevens Institute.

Benios said one wall in the room is made out of Bubble Wrap, a nod to the wallpaper that never was.

Widespread acclaim for his father's invention is not lost on Howard Fielding, but he said he normally does not bring up the topic outside of his own home.

For it is there, on his doorstep, that periodic reminders of his childhood, and the very first bubble he popped, keep coming and coming.

"We get a lot of packages with Bubble Wrap in them," he said. "And it's really hard for me to part with this stuff."

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Alfred Fielding's Family Tree & Friends

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Alfred W Fielding Aug 31, 1917 - Jul 7, 1994

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Other Biographies

Other Alfred Fielding Biographies

Fielding, Alfred (May 5, 1901 - Jan 1980)

Fielding, Alfred (Oct 10, 1914 - Jan 26, 2001)

Other Fielding Family Biographies

Fielding, James (Born 1869) Fielding, Yvonne (Oct 20, 1915 - Dec 24, 1996) Fielding, Edward (Jul 1, 1887 - Sep 1962) Fielding, George (Jul 2, 1901 - Dec 1970) Fielding, Shirley (Dec 25, 1926 - Feb 19, 2006) Fielding, Arthur (Apr 15, 1893 - Dec 1967) Fielding, Arthur (May 3, 1892 - Nov 1974) Fielding, William (Mar 14, 1889 - Jun 1966) Fielding, Gordon (Jan 26, 1918 - Apr 26, 1997) Fielding, Gladys (Nov 2, 1910 - Apr 28, 2003)

Fielding, Madelyn (Oct 23, 1911 - Jan 29, 1989) Fielding, Harold (Jun 1, 1901 - Apr 1982) Fielding, Bessie (Jul 12, 1885 - Nov 1986) Fielding, Wilfred (Jul 14, 1895 - Mar 1976) Fielding, Georgia (Mar 3, 1880 - Apr 1973) Fielding, Jesse (Aug 21, 1886 - Dec 1971) Fielding, William (Nov 28, 1920 - Jan 26, 2003) Fielding, Alan (Sep 23, 1928 - Dec 22, 2006) Fielding, Elizabeth (May 11, 1894 - Nov 1970) Fielding, Cynthia (Apr 7, 1932 - Oct 19, 2009)

About the AncientFaces Community

Alfred W Fielding 1917 - 1994

Alfred William Fielding's History: 1917 - 1994

Introduction

Birthday

Ethnicity & Family History

Nationality & Locations

Early Life & Education

Religious Beliefs

Professional Career

Personal Life & Family

Death

Gravesite & Burial

Obituary

2 Memories, Stories & Photos about Alfred

Alfred Fielding's Family Tree & Friends

Alfred Fielding's Family Tree

Alfred's Friends

Other Alfred Fielding Biographies

Other Fielding Family Biographies