The original museum was created by Dard Hunter and located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Few people visited the museum while it was at MIT and eventually it was moved to a smaller building on campus.

[3] In 1954 the then Institute of Paper Chemistry of Appleton, Wisconsin offered the museum a prominent place on its campus.

During this time the museum continued to grow, and a traveling exhibition program was instituted.

[5] In 2005, through a donation from the Mead-Witter Foundation, an additional exhibition space was added to the museum.