Augmenting Christmas: Artificial Trees and the Lure of Perpetual Nature

In the 1950s, a ladder manufacturer named William Augustus Warren developed a process for molding individual simulations of evergreen branches with polyethylene and high-impact styrene plastic. Unlike metal, wood, glass, or feathers, plastics were so incredibly malleable that their ability to simulate individual pine needles was supercharged, and Warren’s 1958 patent had over 32 thousand needles on a 6-foot-tall tree. Now, 32 thousand needles is significantly more needles than a natural 6-foot evergreen would have on its branches at one time, but none of these needles would fall to the floor over the holiday season, there would be no sap dripping onto domestic carpets, you wouldn’t have to remember to water it, your ornaments could be placed wherever you wanted them to be, and while polyethylene is flammable, the patent claimed the tree was fire-resistant. This was a better tree than anything a forest could provide, and it came with a sachet of natural pine scent to cement this as a superior simulated tree, so closely resembling a better nature for three of the senses: sight, smell, and touch. Warren’s “Lif-Time Christmas Tree,” as it was called, would keep your family safe, would last forever, and would fold down into a 17-inch-long box. Tapping into the aluminum tree craze of the era, these trees came in standard green, white, silver, blue, and pink. Warren had factories in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and his patent is indicative of the “next wave” of simulations ushered in by the Plastics Age.

As Warren developed his patent for his polyethylene tree, a dwindling sales crisis at the American Brush Machine Company prompted its CEOs to repurpose their assembly machines away from their standard twisted wire toilet and bottle brushes to tap into the growing artificial tree market. The technology required to make toilet brushes doesn’t quite make realistic evergreen branches, even if polyvinyl plastic was used to simulate individual needles. The trial run of artificial trees was a disaster, and the company sent a senior machinist, Si Spiegel, to shut down operations. Instead of shutting things down, Spiegel identified a problem in the production process, which he believed he could fix. He convinced company heads to give him some time with the machines and the polyvinyl and set to work, bringing real evergreen trees into the workshop so he could study, simulate, compare, and augment.