Band-Aid Freak!, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I’m a Band-Aid® freak. I love Band-Aid® Brand Adhesive Bandages. I’m famous around the office for stocking a plentiful amount in the metal bin above my cube. Paper cut? No problem. Spider-Man, Batman or SpongeBob SquarePants to the rescue!
Band-Aid® Bandages were invented in 1920 by a New Jersey man named Earl Dickson. Earl worked as a cotton buyer for a small start-up company called Johnson & Johnson. His wife Josephine (formerly Josephine Frances Knight) was always picking up nicks and cuts in the kitchen. Earl invented a ready-made bandage by placing squares of cotton gauze at intervals along an adhesive strip and covering them with crinoline (petticoat material!).
But the new product only sold a total of $3000 the first year. It was the Boy Scouts who put Band-Aid® on the map after an unlimited number of free Band-Aids® were distributed to Boy Scout troops across the country. The long history of innovation continued, and as of 2001, over 100 billion Band-Aid® Brand Bandages had rolled off the assembly line.
In the 1970’s, John Travolta, Terri Garr, and Brooke Shields all appeared in Band-Aid® commercials. And remember that little jingle, I am stuck on Band-Aid® ’cause Band-Aid®‘s stuck on me? It was penned by Barry Manilow (and will surely get stuck in your head!). Barry did pretty well in the jingle business and is also responsible for Like a good neighbor…well, you know the rest.
Earl Dickson didn’t do too bad for himself either. Johnson & Johnson eventually made Dickson a vice president at the company, a position in which he remained until his retirement in 1957. He was also a member of the board of directors until his death in 1961. At the time of his death, Johnson & Johnson was selling over $30,000,000 worth of Band-Aids® each year.
As much as I love Band-Aids®, they weren’t the only invention of the 1920’s. It was a decade quick to embrace wild ideas and new technologies. Here’s a video and a short timeline of other 1920’s inventions:
Crazy 1920’s Inventions from Aaron1912 on YouTube
- Hair Dryer (1920)
Prior to 1920, woman dried their hair by inserting a hose in the exhaust of a vacuum cleaner and blowing themselves dry. But in 1920, hand held dryers were introduced by the US Racine Universal Motor Company (Wisconsin), and the Hamilton Beach Company.
- Combustion Engine Car (1920)
Invented by Henry Ford, cars powered by combustion engines were affordable to the American public and mass produced. The ‘Model-T’ was the first car to roll off the assembly line. (If the price of gas is any indication, the love affair lives on!)
- Kool-Aid (1927)
Edwin Perkins of Hastings, Nebraska created the most important invention in American history: Kool-Aid (originally called Fruit Smack). Perkins was a chemist who owned “Perkins Product Company” which sold perfume and calling cards. The original Kool-Aid flavors? Cherry, Lemon-Lime, Grape, Orange, Root Beer, Strawberry, and Raspberry.
- Liquid-Fueled Rocket (1926)
Robert Goddard’s liquid-fueled rocket and methods of propulsion are still used by the North American Space Association. His oxygen and liquid fuel lifted the original rocket 184 ft.
- Q-Tips (1923)
Polish-born American Leo Gerstenzang was married to a woman who used to cotton swab each end of a stick to clean her baby’s ears. Leo took her innovation and put it on the market. Then called ‘Baby Gays”, the wood was replaced by white cardboard, and Gerstenzang started the “Infant Novelty Company” to sell Q-Tips.
- Lie Detector (1921)
John A. Larson was a medical student at the University of California when he invented the Polygraph, or lie detector. The device measured heartbeat and breathing to determine if a person was lying, and later included a skin monitoring system to measure sweat.
- Bread Slicer (1927)
Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Iowa got the idea for a bread slicer in 1912, and in 1927 invented a machine that could successfully cut and wrap a loaf of bread. The machine was later improved by baker Gustav Papendick.
- Bulldozer (1923)
In 1885, engineer Benjamin Holt built a crawling tractor, which he called “caterpillar.” Later, scraping blades were attached and in 1923, LaPlant-Choate Manufacturing Company produced the first bulldozer.
- Traffic Light (1920)
Police officer William Potts from Detroit, Michigan was the inventor of the traffic light. Using red, amber and green lights, and $37 worth of wire, he built a light for the corner of Woodward and Michigan Avenues in Detroit. Around the same time, African-American Garrett Morgan invented the automated traffic light. It worked the same way railroad lights work today and was the concept on which four way traffic lights were built.
History is pregnant with writing possibility. Pick a 1920’s invention — the combustion engine, the lie detector, the hair dryer — and write about how it changed the future.
Do a Writing Practice on the first childhood memory that comes to mind when you think of Kool-Aid, Band-Aids®, or Q-Tips.
Maybe you hate the feel of a Q-Tip in your ear; or maybe it’s something you look forward to after a morning shower. When’s the last time you tasted Kool-Aid? Did you know it was invented in Nebraska (along with CliffsNotes and the Vise-Grip)?
What’s the greatest thing ever invented? Ten minutes, Go!
-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
-related to post, If You Could Go Back In Time…
🙂 interesting post
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Two more I can think of…
The “talkies” were developed/invented in the 20’s.
The airplane really took off during that decade.
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Thanks, Scot. 8)
mimbresman, yes, and when you look at how big a part of our lives airplanes and movies are these days…I’m guessing they never could have imagined.
The video has some quirky 1920’s inventions, some of which I can’t quite figure out what they are. It’s fun to watch and imagine what it must have been like to be on the ground floor of a designing a new invention.
I like to look at the simple things like Q-Tips and Band-Aids which really came to light out of necessity. It kind of makes me wonder what people are working on today. Are the inventions of our time all electronic?
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What a rich decade and a rich post to honor it. I didn’t know that Band-Aids were invented so long ago. And Q-Tips. My God, I love Q-Tips!
Can you imagine all these things not existing and what a great age for just basic products? We’ve gone through computer age, and we’ve seen the boom in cell phones and PDAs and the Internet, and then all the service-type products around the internet (blogs included), but the 1920s just must have been a fascinating time for all the possibility it represented.
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BTW, I remember looking up inventions by women one time — the bra was invented by a woman (duh). I wanted to see when the bra was invented, just to see if it was any time close to the 1920s when all these other things were created.
The bra was invented in 1913 — it was the first to receive a patent and the one most resembling the modern bra, although other types of support came before. And Maidenform was founded in 1928.
Hey, are you wearing any Band-Aids right now? And what of the problem that sometimes comes up when a brand name becomes synonymous with the generic product — like Band-Aid instead of adhesive bands and Q-Tip instead of cotton swabs? (Kleenex is another, instead of facial tissues.
And last item…Barry Manilow? That was a surprise!
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ybonesy, what do you love about Q-Tips? (That alone would make a good Writing Topic!) Some people use them every day. And to think they were invented around “ears” and that’s still a primary use. Though I’ve used them to clean in cricks and crannies in electronics and other hard to oil places.
I’ve been trying to think of things I wish someone WOULD invent. Like an automatic cat litter scooper. Or something that would pack and unpack my suitcase with just the right amount of travel clothes before and after a trip. 8) Is there anything you wish they would have invented by now?
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Do you have the link to those inventions by women? If you find it, please add it to the comments. I did notice most of the research I did produced a list of male inventors many times with women as inspiration (the Muse). It does make you wonder how many women just didn’t get the credit for things they invented.
But if you look at the link for Garrett Morgan (who invented the automated traffic light), it includes a few women in the list of Top 10 African American Inventors.
BTW, click on that “I am stuck on Band-Aid” link and you’ll hear that jingle. It really gets stuck in your head!
I never thought about the bra but what would we do without it (it can be quite uncomfortable). Though I guess in the 1970’s, quite a few women did go without it!
I’m not wearing a Band-Aid at this moment. But I think Liz might have had one on yesterday. It seems like it was yellow. The last one I wore was a few days ago after gardening and it was a bright red Spider-Man Band-Aid.
I like the Batman ones, too. (Where is Wonder Woman?). I’m guessing they’ll soon come out with IronMan and the Incredible Hulk in honor of those summer movies. We saw a review of Edward Norton as the Hulk and it looked FUN.
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I think the thing I need most — an all-in-one milk heater-upper and foamer — is already invented; I just haven’t bought it. 8)
No, I can’t think of anything I need that hasn’t been invented.
But I suppose that’s the nature of inventions. The average person doesn’t realize it’s needed until the product is there. At least that seems to be the nature of inventions in this current day and age.
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QM, this LINK has a timeline of the brasseire.
This LINK has more about female inventors.
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Oh, thanks for adding those links.
It’s weird about brand names because the manufacturers want their products to become household names — but when something becomes so popular and the word becomes generic, then the brand itself loses something. Remember that controversy about Google not wanting people to say they Googled something?
Other brand names that became generic — Coca-Cola. In the 50’s in the South where I grew up, every brand of soft drink was a Coke (also called Co-Cola in those long drawn out syllables). It was hard for me to break that habit when I became an adult. Every amber soft drink with syrup and sugar was a Coke.
Remember that Coke flavored cough syrup? I bet that was an invention. I once went to a museum of strange medical inventions. There are some real doozies out there. 8)
Check out this Word Detective link for Doozy (LINK)
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Cool, QM, a word invention.
I also call any soda “Coke.” But, no, I don’t remember Coke flavored cough syrup. And my mom was a big believer in cough syrups, plus I was kind of prone since I had croup as a child a lot. I just remember a very medicinal tasting syrup, like almost pure alcohol. Nothing like the grapes and cherries and what have you of today.
It seems like these companies really can’t do much when a word takes hold, like “Googling.” I say that all the time, or I’ll tell someone, Just Google it.
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The thing that always amazes me about these types of inventions is how they really help illustrate the power of “branding.” When you want a facial tissue, you ask for a Kleenex. When you want a medicated adhesive strip to aid in the healing of a boo-boo, you ask for a Band-Aid. When you want a cotton swab, you ask for a Q-Tip. The names were invented by some marketer for a rather ordinary item, and now we relate that name to every similar product. This really stand out when I shop for breakfast cereal. I know I want Cap’n Crunch, but the bag says Colossal Crunch. NOT the same!
Interesting to think about . . .
I love these kinds of posts. You do some great research and compile it beautifully.
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best thing since sliced bread; band-aid ftw!
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I started writing about grape kool-aid and ended up writing about how I made lemonade on Sundays when I was a little girl. Great writing prompt, thanks.
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brian, thanks — yeah, we have to get past a lot of conditioning to go generic with the morning cereal! I am fond of my Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Krispies (though I usually opt for no sugar cereals these days and add fruit).
Branding is huge. We picked up a 12 pack of Super Chill Diet Classic Cola from Super Valu the other day. It’s actually not too bad, but just doesn’t compare to the usual Zero or Diet Coke.
aefiel, hey, thanks for stopping by. Another kindred Band-Aid spirit. 8)
Jackie, hmmm lemonade, now I’m thinking of the little lemonade stands we had as kids. Sometimes we did Kool-Aid, too. Glad the grape Kool-Aid took you where you wanted to go. 8)
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we have to get past a lot of conditioning to go generic with the morning cereal
I’m not wed to any morning cereals, myself, but the same is true for cotton swabs. I’ve tried brands other than Q-Tips, and they’re usually too flimsy or the cotton is not compact and feels like it’s going to come off in in your ears.
QM, I never did tell you why I liked Q-Tips so much, and I don’t mean the brand (since I just said why I like that), but they feel good. Like scratching an itch. I like dental floss for that reason, too. Hey, I wonder when dental floss was invented.
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You had to ask! 8) There’s an excellent article on the invention of dental floss in American Heritage (3/3/6) by Dr. Malvin E. Ring, a dentist in Rochester, New York. It’s really long but worth the read.
Our Daily Thread (LINK)
Dental floss is a great underappreciated invention
by Malvin E. Ring
It seems toothbrushes were expensive in the old days. They were made of bone and hog bristles. The thread used to make floss was expensive, too. Here are some tidbits from the article, but reading the whole thing is highly recommended. You can tell it was written by a dentist!
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That *is* a great link, QM. And I think he’s right; dental floss is an underappreciated invention. I know I resisted for years. 8)
My mom is a dental floss aficcionado, er, well, she likes it a lot. I have a feeling that when I grow old I will be like her in that respect.
We have a friend who flosses after every meal, which is good, although he will pull out his floss and do it in front of everyone, which is not good. I like to floss in private. 8)
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BTW, I was surprised to see how early floss was in use. It’s such a simple product — a piece of silky thread — and so it makes sense that it wouldn’t take as long as, say, Band-Aids to come ’round, but for some reason I thought it was a much more recent innovation.
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This is a cool website. I figured out the writing prompts. I’m going to try this one. Picturing those women who used vacuum tubes to dry hair. Thats being a slave to beauty!
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QM, just catching up after being camp since Tuesday! What an interesting post!
Brant would be jealous of your collection of Band-Aids! (BTW he just turned 7 years old on the 19th!). As his Grandmother I have purchaced every super-hero & comic character made. His favorite right now are some pirate Band-aids that I brought home from a vacation to Ocean City,MD last year.
And shock of all shocks to read that a woman invented the bra! I absolutely hate them & never wear one at home. I do wear them in public however! I would have assumed that a man invented them, as it is also my belief that a man invented one ply toilet paper!:) D
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Satellite Sail, thanks so much for stopping by. I, too, was very drawn to the women who used the vacuum tubes to dry their hair. It reminded me of all the different hair dryers my mother had growing up. And then the one my grandmother had (she was a beautician) that was metal and tall — were they called bonnet hairdryers? Let us know how it goes with your Writing Practice.
diddy, funny about the 1-ply toilet paper. I know exactly what you mean. 8) I didn’t wear a bra during part of my college days. Of course, it was the 70’s and there were many women who weren’t wearing them then. Times have changed, but I’m like you — never around the house!
Liz had on a Nemo Band-Aid last night at Solstice. It glowed in the dark next to the fire light. I can’t believe Brant is 7 already. Crazy how fast time flies. Did he have a good birthday?
Liz has a box of Pirate Band-Aids (you can see them in the top of the photograph) that I bought for her a few Christmas’s ago. The last one she put on was a huge white one with a skull and crossbones in black.
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I just had to drop by this post again and thank inventor Edwin Perkins of Hastings, Nebraska (another famous Nebraskan) who created one of the most important inventions in American history: Kool-Aid! (See links and more info in the post above)
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This topic is so great. Im doing this oral presentation at school and chose 20’s inventions, thanks to you i dont have to look and look for stuff because theyre all in here!
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Dominique, I hope your presentation went well! And thanks for stopping by. I’ve long been fascinated by the 1920’s because it was a kind of renaissance time for creative endeavors of all kinds: inventing, art, writing. Looking back over this post, I see I put a lot of energy into it. It was fun to write. I appreciate that you took the time to comment.
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