now that we’re well into an already sweaty summer, you may have already pulled out the sunscreen — a cream or powder for the skin that provides protection from the sun’s uv rays. and while it may feel like these products only became a thing a couple of decades ago along with the rising awareness of skin cancer, sunblock has always been around. surely you remember those cute
coppertone
ads.
as early as the 1920s, when the association between exposure to the sun and skin cancer was made. soon after, the race to create the perfect product led to a very productive decade: in
1932
, australian chemist milton blake created the first commercial sunscreen for the company hamilton; in
1936
, future l’oreal founder eugene schueller released his own sunscreen product in france called ambre solaire after realizing nothing else worked while he spent time on his boat, natch; in
1938
, swiss student franz greiter created what he branded glacier cream after he himself experienced sunburn while mountain climbing mount piz on the swiss-austrian border, as one does.
greiter, however, is often credited for having invented sunscreen, as his product was the first commercially successful one of its kind in the u.s., and because he coined the term “sun protection factor,” a.k.a. spf, which is a rating system that measures what fraction of uv rays will reach your skin. incidentally, when he created glacier cream, it only had an spf rating of 2. eventually becoming its own company called piz buin, that’s, of course, no longer the case.
kicking things up a notch was benjamin green who, in 1944, created
an original formula
made up of cocoa butter, coconut oil and red veterinary petroleum (“red vet pet”). it was first marketed towards soldiers, who kept them stashed on rafts and in tanks during world war ii. his name for the brand? coppertone — which is, of course, one of the biggest sunscreen brands. after green shifted its marketing from wartime use to everyday use, it catapulted the product into the mainstream