Band-Aids!

Earle Dickon

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1. Kitchen Klutz

   • According to the BAND-AID website, Earle Dickson invented BAND-AID adhesive bandages in 1920. Dickson was a cotton buyer at Johnson & Johnson who lived with his wife, Josephine, in New Jersey. The website says she always had dinner on the table for Dickson when he came home from work. But she also apparently was a klutz in the kitchen frequently cutting and burning her fingers.

   Homemade Bandages

   • Earle Dickson would bandage his wife with pieces of adhesive tape and cotton. Eventually, according to BAND-AID history, Dickson decided to make the bandages ahead of time. He put squares of cotton gauze at intervals along an adhesive strip and covered them with crinoline, a fabric, so it would not stick together. Then, after Josephine sliced or burned her fingers, she could cut off a strip and put on the bandage herself.

   The Company

   • Dickson told his boss at Johnson & Johnson about his invention, and soon the first adhesive bandages were being sold under the BAND-AID trademark. Dickson rose to a position as vice president with the company, where he stayed until he retired.

   Slow Start

   • The product first hit the market in 1920. Back then, BAND-AID bandages were large---3 inches wide and 18 inches long. They were not a big success right away. The company sold $3,000 the first year.
     A profile by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says BAND-AID bandages finally took off after the company distributed an unlimited number of free bandages to Boy Scout troops across the United States.

   Other Important Developments

   • According to the BAND-AID website, in 1938 the company introduced sterile bandages. Then, in 1942 they sent millions of adhesive bandages overseas to help in World War Two. In 1951, Johnson & Johnson started using plastic strips; and about five years after that, they started putting designs on BAND-AID bandages. In 1958, they began making the bandages out of sheer vinyl.
     
     

     Earle later became Vice President of the company. He retired from the company in 1957. "Band-Aid" becoming the trade name.

     
     
     Earle Dickson died in 1961. At the time, Johnson & Johnson was selling more than $30 million worth of BAND-AID products a year.

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And for all the good guys out there: