by Mukul Singh

Post-it Notes: An accident within an accident

Have you ever felt that you want to do something but the opposite happens? Example being, you want to send a screenshot of a chat with an irritating person to your best friend but instead, you send it to that irritating person? Or you want to avoid adding oil to your Chapatis but end up adding extra?

It is often the opposite of what we want to do that happens. One such person was Dr. Spencer Silver.

Now, Dr. Spencer Silver didn’t intend on creating Post-its or sticky notes. Instead, his aim was to invent a super-strong adhesive and instead invented a weaker one. The one these Sticky Notes have. Basically, quite the contrary of what was planned. There! We have an invention!

Easy, right?

Actually, no. He had a product but without use. This solution without a problem was promoted in 3M, the company Dr. Spencer worked at, but no one had any idea how to use it. After 5 years, in 1974, when his colleague Arthur Fry realised that the bookmark he used in his church choir while singing kept falling. It was then when he thought of applying the adhesive to his bookmark. The bookmark stuck in one place.

The solution now had a problem to solve.

The idea to use it on small notes was born with a name ‘Press and Peel’, which initially didn’t gain popularity. However, after a product test in Boise, Idaho, a renamed Post-it Notes was released nationwide in 1980.

As a matter of fact, the notes too weren’t intended to be of Canary Yellow colour. The 3-inch square paper which was the initial product was used from the leftover scrap paper from a nearby laboratory.

It was an accident within an accident.