Another Myth Brilliantly Debunked

Popular Science, June, 1956.

In 1933, just three months after the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 folding-carton manufacturers met in Washington DC to organize objectives and clarify for their constituents a proposed Code of Fair Competition, providing for 40-hour work weeks, a minimum wage of 40-cents per hour for men in the North (35-cents in the South) — and 5-cents per hour for women.

The Folding Paper Box Association of America would go on to influence more than just packaging regulations: a half-century before the Poynter Institute would claim authorship for its allegedly revolutionary Eye-Trac research, the FPBAA was already tracking viewers' visual responses to packaging.


Applied Science Laboratories Eye-Trac 6 System, 2006.

To be fair, the Poynter studies were significant because they targeted news rather than product consumption. Yet both studies, requiring cumbersome headgear and coordinated technologies, operated on a really simple premise: detecting where the eyes go, and what happens next. Pretty basic, when you get right down to it: the eyes as a barometer of consumption patterns...

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