See more Tampax items: American
ad from August 1965 - nudity in an ad: May 1992 (United Kingdom) - a sign
advertising Tampax during World War II - the original patent
- an instruction sheet from the 1930s
See a Modess True or False? ad in The American
Girl magazine, January 1947, and actress Carol Lynley
in "How Shall I Tell My Daughter" booklet ad (1955) - Modess . . . . because ads (many dates).
 
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Was Tampax the first French commercial tampon?
Tampax menstrual tampons, 1938, France and U.S.A.
Typography of the boxes
Even though Tampax produced both 10-count boxes in the U.S., according
to the information on the sides, the type comes out slightly different on
each.
The boxes appear to be printed by letterpress, essentially the way Gutenberg
printed his first books about 1450. In the enlarged letters, below, you
can see the irregular surface of the individual metal letters that the press
- press, get it? - pressed into the cardboard. And the same letters look
slightly different because of the difficulty of making all type alike, and
the individual letters wear out. Early printers had the same problems, as
told in "L'Apparition du Livre "(The Coming of the Book), by Lucien
Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin.
Compare that with a 1970 Tampax box printed by photolithography, below,
the usual way today, which leaves a smooth surface. Instead of the metal
type pressing into the cardboard a photographic film allows ink to lie only
on certain parts of the cardboard. Today someone (I did this for years)
at a computer designs text and illustrations for books, boxes, calendars
and magazines and then sends the work as an electronic file to a printing
press; people there convert it to a photographic plate and print it. Letterpress
is seldom used on large or complicated jobs.
Tambrands generously donated these boxes, part of a large gift of menstrual products from its archives.
Harry Finley created the images.
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The arrows point to the X's on the large word Tampax on each box, American
above and French below. The American X sits lower. There are small differences
between the letters on the two boxes.
Below: look how the T's differ, showing
the most obvious difference between the typefaces. The differences in light
and dark within the letters (enlarged 1200%) show how the metal type, probably
old and worn (like me), pressed against the cardboard. Modern photolithography
makes a smoother image (under this image).
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A Tampax T from a 1970 box (1200%). The fuzzy stuff in the dark part
is from the cardboard. The image is cleaner than the image from metal type.
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NEXT: Tampons -
boxes, typography, tampons, interior of directions,
exterior of directions
See more Tampax items: See instructions
for the 1936 Tampax - and the box, etc. See Dutch
Tampax ads from 1938 (and here, virtually identical
to a contemporary American ad)American ad from
August 1965 - nudity in an ad: May
1992 (United Kingdom) - a sign advertising
Tampax during World War II - the original patent
- an instruction sheet from the 1930s
copyright 2006 Harry Finley
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