The thing is,
Harley Proctor decided his father's company should make a really nice white soap. His cousin,
James Gamble, a
chemist, developed one they called, with all the creativity they could muster,
White Soap. It didn't
float. But they sold it anyway.
Then some slacker employee forgot to turn off the master mixing machine when he left for lunch (notice, I don't have his name.The big guys get all the credit.) He didn't want to throw the batch away, even though it had too much air, so he used the air-laden soap anyway. People loved it. Consumer requests poured in for the soap that couldn't be lost in the dirty, grimy bathwater because it floated to the top. (The air in it is also why a bar gets used up so fast. In case you were curious.) Deciding White Soap was a little too mundane a name, Proctor took the name Ivory from the 45th Psalm. The company ordered that all batches of White Soap be mixed extra long. History was almost made.
Conveniently, October 1879, when Ivory was debuted as Ivory Soap, Edison successfully tested the light bulb. Proctor realized that the candle half of his candle and soap company may soon go out of business. Given this, he heavily promoted Ivory Soap. Some good marketing later, not only was Ivory successful, but Proctor permitted himself to retire a year earlier than he had planned, at the age of 44.