In 1968, Spencer Silver was a senior chemist at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (now called 3M). The adhesives were among 3M's best-selling products, and Silver was actively researching adhesives in the laboratory, trying to create a super-strong adhesive for use in the aerospace industry for building airplanes. “We wanted to develop larger, stronger, more durable adhesives,” Silver said. Unfortunately his prototype was a failure: the glue was too weak to be of any use. It was more of a sticky substance than a bonding glue. Yet the substance had three important properties: firstly, it had a high level of adhesiveness, secondly, it had a low degree of adhesion and thirdly, it was strong. In other words, the adhesive was strong enough to stick to surfaces, but left no residue after removal and could be easily peeled off. The substance also resisted breaking, dissolving or melting, meaning the adhesive is reusable. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Silver had a hard time finding a use for this new glue. He said: “My discovery was a solution waiting for a problem to be solved. » The adhesive was not of interest to 3M management; it was deemed too weak to be useful. Even though Silver promoted the product for five years straight to various 3M employees, the adhesive was more or less shelved. He became known as "Mr. Persistent" because he just wouldn't give up. In 1973, when Dr. Geoff Nicholson was named product laboratory manager at 3M, Silver immediately approached him with the adhesive and gave him samples to play with. Silver suggested that the adhesive be sprayed onto a bulletin board. Users could then stick pieces of paper onto the board without pins or tape. The paper can also be easily removed without leaving any residue. However, the idea was not profitable enough as annual billboard sales were rather low. His boss told Dr. Nicholson to end the project. He initially agreed, but then kept the project afloat under 3M's 15 percent program, which allowed employees to use 15 percent of their work hours to work on experimental projects (if sounds familiar, Dr. Nicholson says Google's legendary 20 percent policy was based on 3M). Nicholson and Silver continued to tinker with the adhesive. Meanwhile, Arthur Fry, another 3M product development researcher, was frustrated. Every Wednesday evening, while he rehearsed with the choir at his church in St. Paul, Minnesota, he used slips of paper to mark the hymns they would sing at the next service. On Sunday, those pieces of paper would have fallen out of the hymn, leaving Fry scrambling. “My mind started wondering during the sermon,” Fry confessed. “I thought about Spence's tape. If I could apply it to paper, that would be just the ticket to a better bookmark. He had a eureka moment, “the one where you feel an adrenaline rush”. Fry came up with the idea of ​​a "sticky bookmark" in 1974. He suggested to Nicholson and Silver that they use the adhesive in reverse. Instead of sticking the adhesive on the bulletin board, they should "put it on a piece of paper and then we can stick it on anything." Spencer and Fry began developing a product, but it proved easier said than done. In.