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Memory Foam History

A Brief history about memory foam

Memory foam was developed in the seventies but didn’t reach the consumer market until the end of the nineties.
I came in contact with Tempur in 1994 and instantly thought it was incredible! The materials used were originally developed for space shuttles by the space institute NASA, although ironically enough it was never actually used for such a purpose. The original memory foam (originally T-foam) it turned out was not ideal to work in space.
However, people did see possibilities for it in the health sector and very quickly memory foam dominated this market. Soon they heard from patients that slept on Tempur memory foam beds that they slept better, turned less in their sleep and that it seriously reduced back problems. This in turn led Tempur to start selling beds directly to the consumer market and with great success. Coming from a medical background Tempur foam was quite expensive and still remains so to this day.

In 1995 the patent on T-Foam (memory foam) became free, making it possible for a number of foam manufacturers to produce their own version of memory foam. Now, (March 2008) almost all foam producers in the world create their own version of memory foam.
So it is quite logical to think that all these types of memory foam differ; they differ in quality, density, firmness, reaction on temperature and lifespan. To produce our own beds I have visited a vast number of foam factories and have seen the different production processes first hand. It quickly became very clear that each memory foam is very different, especially when it comes to temperature reaction and density and of course the quality and importantly the price. Personally I have concentrated on medically certified high quality foams. I will now try to explain what is important in buying a good quality memory foam bed for a good price.