The inventor of Vicks VapoRub was born 170 years ago in North Carolina.
N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
An inventor helped us breathe — and created an annoyance that still lives on.
Lunsford Richardson, the creator of Vicks VapoRub, also is credited with sending out the first junk mail. He was born in North Carolina on Dec. 30, 1854.
So, how did he come up with the two long-lasting inventions? Here’s what we know on what would be his 170th birthday.
The start of Vicks VapoRub
Richardson was born in Johnston County, southeast of Raleigh. He was raised on a plantation but later became known as a “champion of race relations,” according to the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and NCpedia, a state encyclopedia.
Historians said Richardson was exposed to poverty after the Civil War and became “determined to use all of his efforts to help his state prosper once again.”
Richardson worked as a pharmacist in the Johnston County town of Selma before moving to Greensboro. While there, he experimented with products for his medicinal company Vicks, a name that Richardson thought was more punchy than his own.
“The most popular of these remedies was the Croup & Pneumonia Salve, which Lunsford created to (soothe) his own young son’s severe cough,” Vicks wrote on its website. “Today we know this product as VapoRub.”
The strong-smelling topical product — made of “menthol, camphor, oil of eucalyptus and several other oils, blended in a base of petroleum jelly” — is still sold. The Vicks brand now also includes DayQuil and NyQuil, which are designed to relieve cold symptoms.
Lunsford Richardson created junk mail as he tried to advertise Vicks VapoRub, historians said. N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
The creation of junk mail
“Richardson didn’t limit his innovations to the medicine cabinet, either,” state historians wrote in a blog post. “Credited with being one of the first to market to post office box holders without personalizing the materials, he is widely to considered to have invented ‘junk mail.’”
At the time, Richardson was trying to expand Vicks outside of Greensboro. The company became known for its “revolutionary” advertising strategies, becoming an early adopter of road signs and free samples to try to sell its products, UNC University Libraries wrote on its website.
So as Vicks tried to draw in more customers, the company says it “inadvertently” led to the start of junk mail.
“Beginning in 1917, the U.S. Postal Service began to allow the sending of mail to rural addresses without including the name of the individual for whom the letter or parcel was addressed to,” Vicks wrote on its website. “This change allowed Vicks to send millions of samples to mailboxes, meaning that millions of people could use the VapoRub before having to purchase it.”
But in a sad twist, “Richardson died in 1919, the victim of an outbreak of Spanish flu that widely increased the demand for his product.” That means he didn’t “live to see his creation become a worldwide phenomenon,” state historians wrote.
