《3M Post-It Notes Inventor Art Fry Stuck By Creation》：
Art Fry first heard about an odd, underperforming adhesive while playing a round of golf with a fellow 3M engineer.
Developed by staff scientist Spencer Silver in 1968, the adhesive was made up of microscopic balls of acrylic that stuck — but with such a weak bond that you could easily peel apart whatever you were trying to stick together.
Silver didn’t have much of an idea of what to do with the mixture, and support from top executives was tepid. This was 3M (NYSE:MMM), after all, a company built on Scotch tape, which stayed stuck. Best leave this one on the shelf, the front office advised.
Art Fry was born in Minnesota, where he convinced 3M to sell Post-it Notes in 1980. Courtesy 3M View Enlarged Image
Undaunted, Silver spent five years roaming the company, taking his low-tack discovery from division to division, hoping that someone would find a use for it.
That someone was Fry.
The use would take form in what would be called Post-it Notes.
Midwesterner
Born in Owatonna, Minn., in 1931, Arthur Fry was raised in Ontario, Iowa, where his father had found work during the Depression running a feed mill. Young Art received his earliest education in a one-room schoolhouse.
“Ontario had three streets going one way and three going the other,” Fry, who turns 83 on Tuesday, told IBD. “It was so small, the ‘Reduce Speed,’ ‘Welcome to Ontario’ and ‘Resume Speed’ signs were all on the same pole.”
The family moved to Kansas City, Mo., when Art was 9 and already an inveterate tinkerer, taking apart and reassembling whatever he could scavenge from the local dump.
Lumber from discarded crates was another source of invention, with Fry turning out wooden bobsleds and even a dog-drawn cart.
In 1953, while still a student in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota, Fry took a job as a new-product researcher at 3M, then called Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing.
He put in 20 years at the company before that fateful round of golf, working on everything from gift-wrap products to the coatings that turned sheet metal into faux-wood side panels for station wagons.
The use for Silver’s adhesive came to him one Sunday morning in 1973. As a member of his church choir, Fry liked to mark the week’s choral numbers by placing slips of paper in his song books. Inevitably, the markers fell out, leaving him scrambling to find the next hymn.
“I’ve generally never been the sort to be on the same page as everyone else, but I didn’t want to look bad in church,” he said.
《3M Post-It Notes Inventor Art Fry Stuck By Creation》：
Art Fry first heard about an odd, underperforming adhesive while playing a round of golf with a fellow 3M engineer.
Developed by staff scientist Spencer Silver in 1968, the adhesive was made up of microscopic balls of acrylic that stuck — but with such a weak bond that you could easily peel apart whatever you were trying to stick together.
Silver didn’t have much of an idea of what to do with the mixture, and support from top executives was tepid. This was 3M (NYSE:MMM), after all, a company built on Scotch tape, which stayed stuck. Best leave this one on the shelf, the front office advised.
Undaunted, Silver spent five years roaming the company, taking his low-tack discovery from division to division, hoping that someone would find a use for it.
That someone was Fry.
The use would take form in what would be called Post-it Notes.
Midwesterner
Born in Owatonna, Minn., in 1931, Arthur Fry was raised in Ontario, Iowa, where his father had found work during the Depression running a feed mill. Young Art received his earliest education in a one-room schoolhouse.
“Ontario had three streets going one way and three going the other,” Fry, who turns 83 on Tuesday, told IBD. “It was so small, the ‘Reduce Speed,’ ‘Welcome to Ontario’ and ‘Resume Speed’ signs were all on the same pole.”
The family moved to Kansas City, Mo., when Art was 9 and already an inveterate tinkerer, taking apart and reassembling whatever he could scavenge from the local dump.
Lumber from discarded crates was another source of invention, with Fry turning out wooden bobsleds and even a dog-drawn cart.
In 1953, while still a student in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota, Fry took a job as a new-product researcher at 3M, then called Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing.
He put in 20 years at the company before that fateful round of golf, working on everything from gift-wrap products to the coatings that turned sheet metal into faux-wood side panels for station wagons.
The use for Silver’s adhesive came to him one Sunday morning in 1973. As a member of his church choir, Fry liked to mark the week’s choral numbers by placing slips of paper in his song books. Inevitably, the markers fell out, leaving him scrambling to find the next hymn.
“I’ve generally never been the sort to be on the same page as everyone else, but I didn’t want to look bad in church,” he said.