British defence scientists during the Second World War had many projects. Amongst these (although perhaps not as essential as the development of jet engines and code-breaking equipment!) was the development of a synthetic material to replace Balsa wood in airplanes (one of the most successful British aircraft of the war was the all-wood Mosquito and large number of wooden gliders were being ordered for D-Day landings). As Balsa-wood had to be imported from South America, and the German submarine campaign was sinking much of the Allied shipping (1150 ships in 1942), this humble-seeming project was treated with great urgency. Many different formulations of synthetic material were tried but no material was totally successful. One of the most promising was a rigid foam made from cross-linked Polyvinyl Alcohol. This was light and very strong. Unfortunately it had one very serious disadvantage from the point of view of aircraft manufacture - it became beautifully soft and flexible in the presence of water! Sadly, the scientists decided that it would only be suitable for airplanes on service in the Sahara or the Arizona desert, and it was removed from the list of top secret projects. Now there was nothing to stop Ramer Ltd's founder, Mr. Reginald Boswell, from taking the project over for commercialising in a new guise - i.e. as a cosmetic and bathing sponge, exploiting the very characteristic which had made the material useless in Airplanes. He took the work forward from its prototype stage, and a range of sponges for personal use was developed. The first customer, in June 1945, was Elizabeth Arden Ltd., of Bond Street, London, which took Mr. Boswell's entire production during 1945. In 1949 Mr Leslie Smith joined the Company as Sales Executive and later became Mr Boswell's business partner. Today the Company is owned jointly and run by Mr Boswell's Son-in Law and Mr Smith's youngest Son.