a humorous reference to the percentage used in the advertising slogan of ''Ivory'' soap, a
brand of soap first manufactured in the United States in 1879 by the Procter & Gamble
Company (a
major American manufacturer of cleansers, soaps and other various household products). When chemically analyzed, the soap was found to
have very few impurities — only 56/100 of 1 percent. The owners
flipped this
statistic around into the positive statement “99 and 44/100% Pure” which became
its advertising slogan.