The story of Post-It® and Velcro

Post-it® is one of 3M's famous products. The basic ingredient, the glue, was invented by Dr. Spence Silver, who actually created it unwittingly. It was an adhesive that formed itself into tiny spheres with a diameter of a paper fibre. As the spheres would only make intermittent contact they did not stick very strongly when coated onto paper backing. But did you know that 3M research scientist Dr. Spence Silver took 5 years of hawking the product within 3M before he met then new-product manager Art Fry.

Art was frustrated at how ihsi scrap paper bookmarks kept falling out of his church choir hymnal. In a monent of "Eureka", Art found a great innovative use of Dr. Spencer's strange glue as a way to make reliable bookmarks. The Post-it® was born.

In this story of creativity and innovation, Spence created a new type of glue, but it took 5 years before some one else (Art) found an innovative way to use it.

The story continues...

At the turn of the 20th century (early 1900), George de Mestral was a boy living in Switzerland. He loved the outdoors and he also loved inventing.

George received his first patent at 12 years of age for designing a toy plane. As George grew up, he was often in the woods, hunting and walking through bushes and forest areas. he would be annoyed by the burrs that stuck to his pants and his dog's fur. He wondered why the burrs sutck so well. By examining the burrs under the microscope, he discovered that the burrs had hundreds of tiny hooks that grabbed into loops of thread or fur. George worked on the idea that the concept of the burrs could be use. He talked to fabric and cloth experts and worked with different types of woven and knit cloth. In 1952 George started a company name Velcro (Velcro comes from the root French words for velvet and hook)

In this story, George was inquisitive enough to find out why the burrs stuck to his clothes. After discovering the principal of how burrs works, which had been there since creation, George took the idea to create what we know now as Velcro. George innovated nature's gift to the burrs into a product.

source : my critical thinking class