Early in the 1970s at the Ames Research Center NASA funded a project to develop, design, and create your particular substance that could help the astronauts by relieving them of the enormous G forces that they had to experience during lift-off and reentry. The researchers fought that the best way to eliminate or at least reduce the incredible G forces the astronauts had to indoor was to use the material made a foam that could mold to the astronaut's shape and then maintain the conformity of the astronaut's body.



The first experiment they tried was a foam mold of each specific astronaut which they (the researchers) believed could accomplish the elimination of the G forces. This turned out to be an incorrect assumption. Any time the astronauts would move it would take them out of position and this movement in position would create pressure points against their bodies that was actually worse than not having any foam and all.

What the NASA researchers came up with was a new type of polyurethane foam that was visco-elastic. This new visco-elastic foam did the same as the previous foam and conformed perfectly to the astronaut's shape but differed in that when the astronaut moved, the area of the foam where the astronaut had been would pop back to its original shape. This new foam would then allow for the pressure and weight of the astronauts body to be evenly distributed over the entire surface of the visco-elastic foam and would also adapt quickly to any movements the astronauts made.

Soon after (early 1980's) the NASA perfection of the visco-elastic foam one of the largest foam manufacturing companies in Europe, Fagerdala World Foam (from Sweden), began experimenting with the foam for use in the consumer market.

Then in the early 1990's, a Swedish mattress manufacturing company called Temper-Pedic began manufacturing memory foam and a mattress form. In 1991 the Swedish people were introduced to the memory foam mattress. It was a smashing success. Then in 1992, the Swedish Manufacturing Company launched the same mattress is in the United States and Canada where it was also an enormous success.

Because of the success the Temper-Pedic Company had with their version of the memory foam mattress, other manufacturers in the United States and Canada began to work on developing their own memory foam mattresses to offer to the public. Soon mattresses were not the only product to contain memory foam. Many other types of memory foam products began to get manufactured. Items such as pillows, mattress toppers, pet beds, shoes, slippers, seat cushions, and more found their way into the consumer markets of the world.

Memory foam mattresses are now beginning to sell almost as well as traditional innerspring, latex, an air mattresses. Although the top of the line versions of the memory foam mattress are exorbitantly priced most of the medium quality memory foam mattresses can be purchased for under $500. This has greatly increased the popularity of the mattress. The technology for creating this unique mattress type has evolved to the point where even the lower priced mattresses can provide almost exactly the same benefits that the higher end mattresses do. Now you can find this type of mattress along with every other type of product that contains memory foam in most stores and online.