Earle Dickson

September 21, 1961 - Earle Dickson died on this day. His name probably doesn't ring any bells, but his invention is one of the world's most useful items.

In 1920 Earle was a newlywed living in Brunswick, New Jersey. It seems that his wife Josephine often suffered cuts and scrapes. Okay, before all the alarm bells go off, let’s not jump to the worst case scenario here. It is true some people are more accident prone than others, so let’s just assume everything’s on the up and up here. Thank you.

The method for dealing with these minor injuries in those days was to apply some cotton gauze to the wound and then wrap it with a cloth bandage or some adhesive tape. This was a big pain if you were trying to dress a cut on one of your fingers, as you would have to work one-handed.

Earle decided to make some pre-fab bandages for his apparently clumsy wife. He affixed some cotton gauze to a long strip of adhesive and covered it with crinoline. That way when Josephine needed a bandage, all she had to do was trim off a portion of the adhesive and apply it to her wound.

Earle worked as a cotton buyer at Johnson and Johnson, and he eagerly told his bosses about his handy new invention. By 1924 the company had installed machinery to manufacture the cleverly named Band-Aids in a variety of sizes.

Earle got promoted to Vice President and he remained at the company until his retirement in 1957. To date, more than 100 billion Band-Aids have been applied to wounds around the world.