Which standard item of office stationery was discovered accidentally in 1970 by US chemist Spencer Silver working for the 3M Corporation?
"Spencer Silver Spencer Ferguson Silver, an American chemist who worked together with Arthur Fry to invent the Post-it notes in 1974. (disputed) Silver was born in San Antonio, Texas. He majored in chemistry at Arizona State University, earning a B.S. in 1962, then earned a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1966, before taking a position as a Senior Chemist in 3M's Central Research Labs. Silver is now named on over 20 US patents; however, his most significant invention was not an immediate success. In 1968, Silver developed a high-quality but ""low-tack"" adhesive, made"
"development throughout his career at 3M until his retirement in the early 1990s. The item for which he is best known was born in 1974. That year, Fry attended a seminar given by another 3M scientist, Spencer Silver, on a unique adhesive Silver had developed in 1968. Silver's innovation had an unusual molecular structure, yielding an adhesive strong enough to cling to objects but weak enough to allow for a temporary bond. At the time, Silver was still searching for a marketable use for his invention. As the legend goes, Fry was at school when he came up with the"
"inventors, and seeking $400 million in damages. At a preliminary hearing, a federal judge ordered the parties to undergo mediation. The suit was subsequently dismissed declaring the previous 1998 settlement agreement to be upheld. In July 2016 a former 3M marketing department employee, Daniel Dassow, voluntarily came forward as an eyewitness that in 1974 Alan Amron had in fact disclosed his Press-on memo sticky notes invention to 3M. ""The Yellow Stickee Diary of a Mad Secretary,"" by Rosa Maria Arenas, is the mini graphic journal of an office worker/artist, exhibited July 7 - August 25, 2013, at the Michigan Institute"
"years, Silver tried to interest his colleagues at 3M, informally and in presentations. A marketable form of the product proved elusive however, until Arthur Fry attended one of Silver's seminars. Fry sang in his church choir. He was frustrated with the paper bookmarks he used to mark the songs in his hymnal because they would not stay put. In a moment of insight, Fry realized that Silver's reusable adhesive would provide precisely what he needed. Fry wrote up his idea for a reusable bookmark and presented it to his supervisors. Initially, management was skeptical, but the staff could not get"
"once ordered, with respect to an important classified document, ""Burn this for me."" In response to which, a junior officer did just that. Contemporary references to the Thermofax process were not complimentary: Thermofax Thermo-Fax (very often Thermo fax) is 3M's trademarked name for a photocopying technology which was introduced in 1950. It was a form of thermographic printing and an example of a dry silver process. It was a significant advance as no chemicals were required, other than those contained in the copy paper itself. A thin sheet of heat sensitive copy paper was placed on the original document to"
"perfect application. Fry sang in his church choir on nights, and he used slips of paper to mark the pages of his work book. When the book was opened, however, the makeshift bookmarks often moved around or fell out altogether. On a Sunday in 1973, it occurred to him that Silver's adhesive could be put to use to create a better bookmark. If it could be coated on paper, Silver's adhesive would hold a bookmark in place without damaging the page on which it was placed. The next day, Fry requested a sample of the adhesive. He began experimenting, coating"
"Arthur Fry and Spencer Silver invented the bookmark in 1974, originally called the Press 'n' Peel bookmark. However, the case was dismissed, to which Alan Amron said with disappointment, “it’s not surprising that big money beat little money.” In July 2016 a former 3M marketing department employee, Daniel Dassow, voluntarily came forward as an eyewitness that in 1974 Alan Amron had in fact disclosed his Press-on memo sticky notes invention to 3M. Alan Amron Alan Amron (born November 20, 1948) is an American inventor who holds 40 United States patents. He is also involved in a popular dispute of $400"
"innovations in this era included masking tape, waterproof sandpaper, and Scotch-brand tapes. By 1929, 3M had made its first moves toward international expansion by forming Durex to conduct business in Europe. The same year, the company's stock was first traded over the counter and in 1946 listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company is currently a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and of the S&P 500. The founders original plan was to sell the mineral corundum to manufacturers in the East for making grinding wheels. After selling one load, on June 13, 1902, the five"
"Silver, a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US overheard the president of the local food chain, Food Fair, asking one of the deans to research a system to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver told his friend Norman Joseph Woodland about the request, and they started working on a variety of systems. Their first working system used ultraviolet ink, but the ink faded too easily and was expensive. Convinced that the system was workable with further development, Woodland left Drexel, moved into his father's apartment in Florida, and continued working on the system. His"
"plugs. The device is 12.555 lb or 5.7 kg, has 11 transistors and dimensions of 10.6×5.5×14.8 inch, which equal 270×140×375 mm. In 1973, the 3M device for schools cost US$299, which would be $ today. Ricoh Synchrofax Ricoh Synchrofax is a Japanese dictating machine from 1959, reissued in 1974 as the 3M Sound Page (model ""627AA"" and ""627AG"") as official teaching material in the US-state of Oklahoma. It is also known as sound paper. Inventor Sakae Fujimoto filed the patents US3074724A and US3046357A in 1959. The device produced by Ricoh uses bottom side magnetic coated paper, positioned by three perforations"
"not easily adhere. The Post-It Extreme Notes were specifically designed with work environments like construction and manufacturing in mind. Inventor Alan Amron has made claims to be the inventor who in 1973 disclosed the technology used on the Post-it Note to 3M in 1974. His 1997 suit against 3M was settled and 3M paid Amron. As part of the settlement, Amron undertook not to make future claims against the company except if ever a breach of the settlement agreement should occur. However, in 2016, he launched a further suit against 3M, asserting that 3M were wrongly claiming to be the"
"invented in the late 70's by E. Bryant Crutchfield, Director of New Ventures at the Mead Corporation. The binder got its name because it was sold in combination with pocket folders designed by Mead called ""Trappers"", which differed from other pocket folders in that the pockets' three sides connected with the bottom, outside edge, and top (as opposed to the bottom, outside edge, and spine) of the folders. This design prevented papers from falling out of the Trapper's pockets when it was closed. Trappers were three-hole punched so that they could be put in any 3-ring binder, including a Trapper"
"by the development of the Polaroid Zink (""zero-ink"") system. Both of these methods rely on multi-layer coatings with three separate colorizing layers, but different methods are used for independent activation of each layer. The earliest direct thermal papers were developed by NCR Corporation (using dye chemistry) and 3M (using metallic salts). The NCR technology became the market leader over time, although the image would fade rather rapidly compared with the much more expensive, but durable 3M technology. Texas Instruments invented the thermal print head in 1965, and the Silent 700, a computer terminal with a thermal printer, was released in"
"of tiny, indestructible acrylic spheres that would stick only where they were tangent to a given surface, rather than flat up against it. Spencer used the patented formula from Shiro Takemoto. As a result, the adhesive's grip was strong enough to hold papers together, but weak enough to allow the papers to be pulled apart again without being torn. More importantly, the adhesive could be used again and again. Silver wanted to market the adhesive as a spray, or as a surface for bulletin boards on which temporary notices could be easily posted and then removed. Over the next five"
"traveled across the Atlantic Ocean packed near olive oil, and the oil had penetrated the stones. Unable to take the loss of selling expensive inventory, they roasted the stones over fire to remove the olive oil; this was the first instance of research and development at 3M. The company's late innovations include waterproof sandpaper (1921) and masking tape (1925), as well as cellophane ""Scotch Tape"" and sound-deadening materials for cars. In 1947, 3M began producing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) by electrochemical fluorination. During the 1950s, the company expanded worldwide with operations in Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom"
"only one edge of the paper so that the portion extending from a book would not be sticky. Fry used some of his experiments to write notes to his boss. This use led him to broaden his original idea into the concept that became the Post-it Note. In subsequent years inventor Alan Amron claimed to have introduced the concept to 3M and sued the company. It took a few years for the concept to come to fruition, due to both technical problems with production and management's doubts about the product's saleability. Post-it Notes were released to the national market in"
"Richard Gurley Drew Richard Gurley Drew (June 22, 1899 – December 14, 1980) was an American inventor who worked for Johnson and Johnson, Permacel Co., and 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he invented masking tape and cellophane tape. When Drew joined 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1921, it was a modest manufacturer of sandpaper. While testing their new Wetordry sandpaper at auto shops, Drew was intrigued to learn that the two-tone auto paintjobs so popular in the Roaring Twenties were difficult to manage at the border between the two colors. In response, after two years of work in"
"when the name Xerox soon became synonymous with ""copy"", would become the Xerox Corporation. In 1963, Xerox introduced the first desktop copier to make copies on plain paper, the 813. It was designed by Jim Balmer and William H. Armstrong of Armstrong-Balmer & Associates, and won a 1964 Certificate of Design Merit from the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI). Balmer had recently left Harley Earl, Inc., where he had been a designer since 1946, to co-establish Armstrong-Balmer & Associates in 1958. At Earl, Balmer had been involved in the Secretary copy machine designed for Thermofax and introduced by 3M in 1958,"
"inquiry to the Drexel Institute asking about research into a method of automatically reading product information during checkout. Silver joined together with fellow graduate student Norman Joseph Woodland to work on a solution. Woodland's first idea was to use ultraviolet light sensitive ink. The team built a working prototype but decided that the system was too unstable and expensive. They went back to the drawing board. On October 20, 1949, Woodland and Silver filed their patent application for the ""Classifying Apparatus and Method"", describing their invention as ""article classification… through the medium of identifying patterns"". The first commercially successful barcode"
"1980. In 1981, 3M named Post-it Notes its Outstanding New Product. In 1980 and 1981, the Post-it Note team received 3M's Golden Step Award, given to teams who create major new products that are significantly profitable. 3M named Fry a corporate researcher in 1986. He is also a member of 3M's Carlton Society and Circle of Technical Excellence. Fry currently resides in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was mentioned in the film ""Romy and Michele's High School Reunion"" as the true inventor of Post-its. In 2003 the Post-it Note played a central role in a new play titled ""Inside a Bigger"
"anchor his bookmark in his hymn book. Fry then utilized 3M's officially sanctioned ""permitted bootlegging"" policy to develop the idea. The original notes' yellow color was chosen by accident, as the lab next-door to the Post-It team had only yellow scrap paper to use. 3M launched the product as ""Press 'n Peel"" bookmark in stores in four cities in 1977, but results were disappointing. A year later 3M instead issued free samples directly to consumers in Boise, Idaho, with 94 percent of those who tried them indicating they would buy the product. The product was sold as ""Post-Its"" in 1979"
"his basket and it was scanned by Sharon Buchanan at 8:01 am. The pack of gum and the receipt are now on display in the Smithsonian Institution. It was the first commercial appearance of the UPC. In 1971, an IBM team was assembled for an intensive planning session, thrashing out, 12 to 18 hours a day, how the technology would be deployed and operate cohesively across the system, and scheduling a roll-out plan. By 1973, the team were meeting with grocery manufacturers to introduce the symbol that would need to be printed on the packaging or labels of all of"
"and familiar events such as the 2015 Texas pool party incident, the Death of Sandra Bland, the Death of Eric Garner and others. He says he was initially inspired in 2005 by the realization that many American middle and high schools now have police patrolling hallways and classrooms. Pee Chee folder The yellow Pee-Chee All Season Portfolio was a common American stationery item in the second half of the 20th century, commonly used by students for storing school papers. It was first produced in 1943 by the Western Tablet and Stationery Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Pee-Chees were later produced by"
"when the rollout introduction began, and was sold across the United States from April 6, 1980. The following year they were launched in Canada and Europe. In 2003, the company came out with ""Post-it Brand Super Sticky Notes,"" with a stronger glue that adheres better to vertical and non-smooth surfaces. Until 3M's patent expired in the 1990s, Post-it type notes were produced only in the company's plant in Cynthiana, Kentucky. In 2018 3M launched the new ""Post-It Extreme Notes"" designed to be more durable and water-resistant and to stick to a variety of surfaces to which regular Post-It notes do"
"systems, and an Advanced Optical Character Reader (AOCR) which reads addresses from mailed letters and reprints it as bar codes for easy resorting at smaller post offices that have simpler and cheaper sorting machines. In 1960, while at IBM, Parry invented the magnetic stripe card for use by the U.S. Government. He had the idea of gluing short pieces of magnetic tape to each plastic card, but the glue warped the tape, making it unusable. When he returned home, Parry's wife Dorothea was using a flat iron to iron clothes. When he explained his inability to get the tape to"
"Serendipity Serendipity means an unplanned, fortunate discovery. The notion of serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of scientific innovation. Examples are Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928, the invention of the microwave oven by Percy Spencer in 1945, and the invention of the Post-it note by Spencer Silver in 1968. In June 2004, a British translation company voted the word to be one of the ten English words hardest to translate. However, due to its sociological use, the word has since been exported into many other languages. The first noted use of ""serendipity"" in the English"
"world's first transparent cellophane adhesive tape (called ""sellotape"" in the UK and ""Scotch tape"" in the United States). During the Great Depression, people began using Scotch tape to repair items rather than replace them. This was the beginning of 3M’s diversification into all manner of marketplaces and helped them to flourish in spite of the Great Depression. Drew died in 1980 in Santa Barbara, California. Richard Gurley Drew Richard Gurley Drew (June 22, 1899 – December 14, 1980) was an American inventor who worked for Johnson and Johnson, Permacel Co., and 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he invented masking"
"3M's labs, Drew invented the first masking tape (1925), a two-inch-wide tan paper strip backed with a light, pressure-sensitive adhesive. The first tape had adhesive along its edges but not in the middle. In its first trial run, it fell off the car and the frustrated auto painter growled at Drew, ""take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it!"" (By ""Scotch,"" he meant ""cheap"".) The nickname stuck, both to Drew's improved masking tape, and to his 1930 invention, Scotch Brand cellulose tape. In 1930 he came up with the"
"tobacco and oil industries had experienced previously. The trust was dissolved and the assets were split between four companies. ""Wright Post"", ""Evans Roberts Godkin Inc"",""Franks-Girling Universal Postage"" and ""Pitney-Bowes Co"". The Model M Postage Meter was authorized on September 1, 1920 and was put into commercial use in Stamford later that year. (In 1986, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated the Model M as an International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark). The postage meter normally consists of a keyboard for entering the postage, three seals, and a stamping mechanism. Years ago, users needed to take their meter to a postal"
"with his daughters in order to improve the Nintendo device. Regardless of the fact that the staff at Sony were against his work, Ken was lucky enough to get a senior employee's attention. This resulted in the beginning and creation one of the Sony's most valued products at the market right now, Sony PlayStation. At the moment PlayStation is one of the leaders in gaming industry, being one of the best selling consolses - it's a clear result of success and innovation from ""intrapreneurship"". 3M: Dr. Spencer Silver was trying to create a strong adhesive with the aim of using"
"2012. He is recognized by ARTBA for his work at 3M with reflective coating and being known as the ""father of reflective materials."" Harry Heltzer Harry Heltzer (August 22, 1911 – September 21, 2005) was the Chairman & Chief Executive Office of 3M from 1970 to 1975. Harry was also President of 3M from 1966 to 1970. Heltzer was forced to resign from 3M amidst allegations of improper campaign contributions during the Nixon years. Heltzer later divorced his wife Bernice (Lejcher). He remarried and moved to Lenoir, North Carolina. Early at Minnesota Mining, he co-invented Scotch-Lite, a glass bead coating"
"was originally developed and brought to market by the 3M company under the trade name Driography in the late 1960s. Results with the product however, were mixed. Several problems were encountered both in the development of suitable inks for this process and more importantly, in the durability of the driography plate. After several years of R&D and many millions of dollars invested, 3M chose not to pursue further development of the product. In 1972 Toray Industries, a large Japanese company specializing in synthetic materials development and manufacturing, purchased the patents for the driography product from 3M. Related patents were also"
"a linear code, like the one being developed by Woodland at IBM, was printed in the direction of the stripes, so extra ink would simply make the code ""taller"" while remaining readable. So on 3 April 1973, the IBM UPC was selected as the NAFC standard. IBM had designed five versions of UPC symbology for future industry requirements: UPC A, B, C, D, and E. NCR installed a testbed system at Marsh's Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, near the factory that was producing the equipment. On 26 June 1974, Clyde Dawson pulled a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum out of"