Art Fry, Chorister and Post-it Inventor
In the age of social media and the internet, things lead to things lead to things. We were watching a pretty good Irish crime drama set in the 1970s and a Post-it was put on a board in the incident room. Hold on, I thought, were there Post-its in that decade? No, it turns out, at least not for public sale.
I did discover an intriguing story which was music to my ears. It seems that in 1968 a 3M scientist named Spencer Silver developed an adhesive that just didn't work. It was sticky but wasn't strong enough to be effective for the intended purpose. A few years later a newcomer to the company was frustrated that the markers he would put in his hymn book and choir music would fall out. According to the National Inventors Hall of Fame website (I'm not making this up) this is how these two ended up "singing from the same hymn sheet" as the expression goes:
Everything changed in 1974, when NIHF Inductee Art Fry, a new product development researcher at 3M, was singing one night at church and wondered if he could make a bookmark that would stick to his hymnal but not damage the page after removing it. Immediately he thought back to a presentation he heard Silver give about his new microsphere adhesives. “So I made the bookmarks,” Fry said in an interview with NIHF. “Well, it turned out that they weren’t just bookmarks — they were really handy for self-attaching notes, labels and tapes.”
Art Fry and Spencer Silver
The Post-it we have come to know and love came on the commerical scene in 1980. As I clatter away at my keyboard there are Post-its all along the bottom of my computer monitor, some with ideas for future blog entries.
I've certainly see the good, the bad, and the ugly emerge from choir lofts over the decades, but a world-changing invention? I imagine that with all the seasonal choir concerts coming up the sales of Post-its have soared!
3 comments:
Those little sticky strips are a godsend to choristers !
Amen to thatJudy! Thanks for the interesting blog David. Who knew? Even though "good, bad and ugly" sometimes come from the choir loft, brilliant and useful can also originate there too!
I figured this one would tickle the fancy of choir folk! It gives new meaning to the phrase "members and adherents", dontcha think? Thanks Judy and Shirley.
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