The Minnesota mining and manufacturing company was founded in 1902. The plan was to sell corondum to manufacturers producing sandpaper and grinding wheels. Unbeknowst to them, their geological studies were incorrect. They were selling a worthless igneous rock that didn't work for grinding.
Since they had no way to make a decent abrasive from what their mine was producing, they decided to get into the abrasives business directly. At the time, corondum was the standard in the industry. Rather than use that, they expiremented with using garnet and other less expensive stones to make sand paper and grinding wheels.
There was a problem though. For the most part, stones like this are either soft and porous, and thus make poor abrasives, or hard and non porous, in which case they make good abrasives but are difficult to attach to a paper or a wheel.
Because of this, their research focused mainly on how to attach these little hard ground up stones to a wheel or piece of paper. On how to fabricate adhesives. This research not only allowed them to produce better grinding products than were commercially available at the time, it allowed them to create entirely new products.
For example, they invented waterproof sandpaper, which allows for wet sanding and prevents metal and paint dust in manufacturing environments. They also invented masking tape. And scotch tape.
in 1966, Spencer Silver took a job there. Mr. Silver had a phd in Ochem, and took a job as a senior chemist studying pressure sensitive adhesives.
Mr. Silver spent 8 years learning about organic chemistry, then went to work for a company that had been studying and developing adhesives for more than 50 years. This is mr silver's own account of the discovery, originally published in FT magazine.
As part of an experiment, I added more than the recommended amount of the chemical reactant that causes the molecules to polymerise. The result was quite astonishing. Instead of dissolving, the small particles that were produced dispersed in solvents. That was really novel and I began experimenting further. Eventually, I developed an adhesive that had high “tack” but low “peel” and was reusable. Using the adhesive, the company developed a bulletin board that remained permanently tacky so that notes could be stuck and removed. But I was frustrated. I felt my adhesive was so obviously unique that I began to give seminars throughout 3M in the hope I would spark an idea among its product developers.
In 1977, after pursuing the idea for years, he finally found his product, the post it note (whcih failed miserably the first time it was produced).
A guy with an advanced degree in ochem, working for a company dedicated to the study and production of adhesives for 50 years. Who had to pimp his invention around for years before he found a proper use for it.
No, it wasn't just luck. Like most things it was diligence, intelligence, hard work and study.
You are missing my point. Mr. Silver himself has acknowledged that his discovery was "lucky" in the sense that he set out to create something else (actually, a superglue type of product as I recall) and instead ended up creating, purely by accident, something completely different and with the exact opposite qualities than he set out to produce--the adhesive that we use on Post-It Notes today.
If that's not luck, I don't know what is.
Did luck play a role, certainly. Could it have played out another way, for sure (though the dude holds 20 patents for adhesive materials, so that one lucky break probably wasn't a huge deal in his life), but at the end of the day that "luck" would have been meaningless without an advanced degree in ochem and a corporation that spent 50 years studying glue.
Agreed. But the guy would't have had an advanced degree to begin with in the absence of luck. He was born in the right country. Wasn't abused to the point of being unable to function. His genetic aptitude for analytical subjects must have been pretty high. He must have has some natural mathematical abilities, or at least a natural interest in math. He was able to afford college. Etc., etc., etc. Life is so very random that nobody "earns" their fate in life.
Great story about a hometown company. Im surprised at how many posts i've seen from Minnesota
This is a great lesson in perseverance and I take it very personally to heart. I myself have "pimped" around many original ideas of mine. Until now, all I've received are slammed doors and cold shoulders. Some have even copied those ideas after learning that they weren't patented or copyrighted (my mistake). But the bottom line is that I will NEVER give up!