How did James Wright get the idea for silly putty?

The story of American commerce has always been as much one of marketing as it has of invention. A famous example of what can be achieved by taking a product and repackaging it is provided by the stroke of genius that seized a New Haven, Connecticut store owner named Peter Hodgson. During World War II, James Wright working for the General Electric laboratories had produced a synthetic, pliable rubber that was cheap and useful for a lot of small jobs as a caulking and molding medium. With the war over, a large supply existed, and no one seemed to have any idea what to do with it. Mr. Hodgson came up with one. He bought a large amount, put it into plastic eggs, and sold it to children under the name Silly Putty. Kids could use it to make spiders and snakes, ware it on their faces at Halloween, and even lift comic-strip pictures right off the pages of the Sunday funnies.Currently Silly Putty brand products come in more than 15 different colors in the unmistakable egg-shaped packaging. Kids today continue to discover and marvel over Silly Putty's unique properties that allow it to be bounced, stretched and molded into a multitude of wacky shapes.