Baking Soda Arm & HammerAbstractArm & Hammer brand baking soda has been a staple of American life since 1846. The brand, once used only for baking, has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the 1970s by reinventing it itself and its usefulness without changing a single ingredient. The new marketing campaign would eventually expand the Arm & Hammer brand to include deodorant, laundry detergent, cleaning products and even toothpaste. An interesting story with many interesting uses in such an uninteresting little yellow box we all know, Arm & Hammer baking soda has become as American as apple pie and baseball. In fact, you probably couldn't even name another brand of baking soda, right? The Little Yellow Box Although we are all familiar with the little yellow box in our refrigerators or our mother's pantry, many of us would be amazed at what can do away with the contents of that little yellow box. Arm & Hammer baking soda has been used as a toothpaste, a remedy for bee stings, a fire extinguisher, a pot sponge, a facial scrub, a battery acid neutralizer, a laundry additive, a carpet freshener, a way to test the pH in your garden soil, a litter freshener, a flea remedy, even removes tea stains from old plastic cups (Thomlison, n.d.). These are just a few of the consumer uses of Arm & Hammer baking soda, not to mention commercial and industrial uses such as abrasive blasting for the removal of surface coatings, in water treatment plants, in air pollution control, as an additive in oil wells. drilling fluids and also as an alternative to CFCs in the electronics industry (Thomlison, n.d.). Started in 1846 by Dr. Austin Church in Rochester, New York, it was the first American factory to produce saleratus or baking soda. Dr. Church believed he had a better and cheaper way to produce this popular additive in America than to continue to import it from Europe. His brother-in-law, John Dwight, an ambitious gentleman and persuasive salesman, traveled from grocer to market promoting the American-made substance, building a sizable customer base. The company was renamed John Dwight & Company and called their baking soda product, Cow Brand Baking Soda (Wikipedia, 2005). Soon after Dr Church retired in 1867, his two sons set up their own company called Church & Co.