Human history is full of fascinating stories of accidental inventions and discoveries. Here inventions often didn’t collaborate with the intention of inventors and emerged as something unique yet quite useful. It is scattered with extraordinary stories of ‘inventions gone wrong’ and different outcomes. The invention of Post-It is also a familiar story of such an apparent super flop yet groundbreaking invention.
Young chemist Dr Spencer Silver joined 3M with a passion for changing the world. He was extremely confident that his invention going to be the ‘next big thing’. He started his journey with the mission of producing the world’s strongest adhesive. After two years of rigorous hard work in 1968, he finally came up with an adhesive. However, his days of hard work paid off most weirdly; because, his invention was an adhesive that stuck loosely with everything but was not strong enough. Though, his weird invention made him a real ‘joke’ among colleagues; still, he was confident that his ‘not so earth-shattering’ invention must have some practical use.
Three years later, his colleague Art Fry was struggling to fix a proper bookmark on his Bible which would not destroy his Bible and at the same time would help him in advance to prepare for his Sunday choir. Fry applied his colleague Spencer’s adhesive as a bookmark on his Bible. It worked wonderfully as a bookmark and did not destroy Fry’s Bible.
This new observation was the much-awaited breakthrough that Dr. Spencer was waiting for all these years. Now, instead of one, two heads were searching simultaneously for a commercial use of that unique adhesive product. After a few alterations finally, both friends came up with a formula for the adhesive that could be used as an adhesive on the bookmark. This new invention paved the way for one of the indispensable office stationary ‘Post It’. Though both friends were not sure about its exact application yet apart from as a bookmark.
One day Fry sent a file to his boss and he stuck one of his ‘glued bookmarks’ on the desired page of that file for the boss’s convenience. At the end of the day, his boss wrote his brief remark about that file on that bookmark itself. It was the beginning of the journey of Post-It which eventually became one of the most beloved office stationary. Though, Dr. Silver affectionately prefers to call it ‘World’s First Twitter’.
Do you like this amazing story of an inventor whose invention initially was a disaster and eventually emerged as something indispensable? If you love such fascinating stories of inventions and discoveries, visit our “Stories of Invention” section. Discover how messy, accidental, or even funny moments have shaped the world and human history!
