In 1949, Emanuel Goldberg, a chemist from Rochester, New York, developed the first plastic pipette holder and founded the Nalgene Company. For years Goldberg and his team developed the Nalgene line of state of the art polyethylene laboratory equipment: centrifuge bottles, filter units, storage tanks. Obviously, it wasn’t the kind of stuff you toss into your backpack for a weekend in the bush but there were rumours floating around about scientists taking the smaller, more convenient bottles out of the lab and using them on hikes and excursions.

By the 1970s Marsh Hyman, the Nalgene Company President, noticed that Boy Scouts including his son were using these bottles for camping. Recognising their potential, Hyman directed the company to promote the bottles for outdoor use, leading to the creation of Nalgene Outdoor Products.

75 years from their inception, Nalgene bottles are still made in the U.S. as they were back in 1949: BPA-free plastic pellets are melted into a tube, then inflated with 150 PSI of air to create the classic 32-ounce bottle. Up until 2002, the Nalgene bottle was only available in grey! Luckily times have changed and we just secured a heap of different colours, available exclusively at our little outdoors store.