Cuts and bruises are not something that scare us easy because we know what the quick fix is. The Band-aid. But how many of us know how exactly did it come along? Like any other invention, its story is romantic but unlike those stories which romance science, this actually revolves around a person.
Earle Dickson worked at Johnson and Johnson and was recently married to Josephine Knight. They were very much in love with each other, excitedly starting their new life together.
As fate would have it, his lovely wife had the habit of getting herself injured quite often while working in the kitchen. The bandage that would be put on the injury would fall off due to lack of proper support and the nature of her domestic work.
This sparked an idea in Earle Dickson’s mind and he stuck a square of gauze in the middle of each strip of a tape so that if his wife cut herself again, she might use a ready-made bandage quickly without much fuss.
He made plenty of such bandages and kept them ready for his accident-prone wife. And these bandages would not fall off.
Johnson & Johnson, at the time, a company that manufactured gauze and adhesive tape as a cotton buyer, heard about the bandage that Earle was making for his wife that she could wear in less than thirty seconds.
The idea didn’t kick off very well but come 1924, it flourished worldwide and Earle Dickson was made the vice-president of the company and was also given a seat on the board of directors.
As you can see, the rest is history. 🙂
Source : Mental Floss