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Coover was attempting to make clear plastic gun sights to be put on guns used by Allied soldiers in WWII.  One particular formulation he came up with didn’t work well for gun sights, but worked fantastically as an extremely quick bonding adhesive.  Surprisingly, despite the commercial potential of such a product, Coover abandoned that formulation completely as it obviously wasn’t suitable for his current project, being too sticky.

canopies

for jet canopies

Dr. Coover was the supervisor of a project looking at developing a heat resistant acrylate polymer for jet canopies.

Fred Joyner was working on that project and at one point used the rediscovered Super Glue and tested it by spreading ethyl cyanoacrylate between a pair of refractometer prisms.  To his surprise, the prisms became stuck very solidly together.  This time, Coover did not abandoned the cyanoacrylate (Super Glue), rather,  he realized the great potential of a product that would quickly bond to a variety of materials and only needed a little water to activate, which generally is provided in the materials to be bonded themselves.

Super Glue was finally put on the market in 1958 by Eastman Kodak and was called the slightly less catchy name of “Eastman #910″, though they later re-named it “Super Glue”.

Note: It should be noted here that while Super Glue was originally invented by accident thanks to WWII, it was not, as a popular urban legend tells, accidentally discovered by soldiers in WWII who then subsequently began using it to seal up battle wounds.  Rather, it was discovered as described above and didn’t hit the public market until well after WWII had ended

Interestingly though, according to its creator, Dr. Harry Coover, Super Glue actually was used  in the Vietnam War to help close up wounds on soldiers while they were being transported to hospitals to then receive stitches.  Today, a form of cyanoacrylate is often used in place of or in conjunction with traditional sutures.

Fry then suggested to Nicholson and Silver that they were using the adhesive backwards.  Instead of sticking the adhesive to the bulletin board, they should “put it on a piece of paper and then we can stick it to anything.”

This initially proved easier said than done, in terms of practical application.  It was easy enough to get the adhesive on the paper, but the early prototypes had the problem that the adhesive would often detach from the paper and stay on the object the paper was stuck to, or, at least, leave some of the adhesive behind in this way.  There was no such problem with the bulletin boards Silver had made because he had specifically made them so that the adhesive would bond better with the board than the paper. Two other 3M employees now entered the scene, Roger Merrill and Henry Courtney.  The two were tasked with coming up with a coating that could be put on the paper to make the adhesive stay bonded to it and not be left behind on whatever the paper was stuck to when it was removed, a task at which they were ultimately successful at achieving. Interestingly, because management at 3M still didn’t think the product would be commercially successful, they more or less shelved it for three years, even though the Post-It notes were extremely popular internally at 3M labs during that span.    Finally, in 1977, 3M began running test sale runs of the Post-It note, then called “Press ‘n Peel”, in a certain areas in four different cities to see if people would buy and use the product.  It turned out, no one much did, which confirmed in the minds of the executives that it wasn’t a good commercial product.

This time, the re-order rate went from almost nothing, in the previous attempt, to 90% of the people and businesses that had received the free samples.  For reference, this was double the best initial rate 3M had ever seen for any other product they’d introduced.  Two years later, the Post-It note was released throughout the United States.

So after 5 years of constant rejection for the adhesive and another seven years in development and initial rejection, Post-It notes were finally a hit and have since become a mainstay in offices the world over, today being one of the top five best selling office supply products in the world.

Another obstacle in the initial launch of Post-It notes was that, because it was a completely new type of product, it required the construction of new machinery to mass produce the Post-It note pads, which was initially prohibitively expensive for a product seen by many within 3M as destined for commercial failure.

Post-It notes received an upgrade in 2003 when 3M launched a new version of the Post-It note with super sticky glue that has better adhesion to vertical surfaces.

 Post-It notes are occasionally used in art-work.  One such famous example was in 2008 when Shay Hovell used 12,000 Post-It notes to create a replica of the Mona Lisa.  The most expensive Post-It note art piece was done by R.B. Kitaj and sold for £640 (about $1000) in 2000.

he was in charge of the development of ejection seats

ired as a safety engineer for AB Volvo in Gothenburg, Sweden.

. Safety belts were in use at the time, but the most prevalent design used a single strap with a buckle over the stomach. This design risked injury to body organs in high-speed crashes.

Bohlin aimed to find an alternative design that would not only protect both the upper and lower body, but would also be comfortable and simple to use.

The design held both the upper and lower body in place, and was simple enough that the driver could buckle up with one hand.

In 1958, Bohlin was h

by 1963 all Volvos came equipped with front seat belts, and the company decided to make the design free for use by all car makers.

In 1959, Volvo became the first auto maker to introduce Bohlin’s three-point safety belt design.

The report claimed that the belt had already saved thousands of lives, reducing the risk of injury or death in car accidents by as much as 75 percent.

It persuaded a number of other national governments to do the same

Since its introduction, the three-point shoulder/lap safety belt has changed very little in its overall design.

As of today, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates the belts reduce the risk of deaths in car crashes by at least 45 percent.

Bohlin retired from Volvo in 1985.

In 1974 Bohlin was awarded The Ralph H. Isbrandt Automotive Safety Engineering Award.

honored in 1979 and in 1985 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington, D.C. In 1995, he received a medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. In 2002, he was inducted into the (U.S.) National Inventors Hall of Fame. On the day he was to be honored for this achievement, Bohlin died at age 82.

The fourth, the "Orange Book", is merely an outline for the coming generation of writable CD technology, primarily CD-E. (Compact Disc - Erasable) This is meant to replace, or be used in the same matter as floppy discs, only providing a much larger medium to store data. The technology is available today, but know otherwise as CD-RW. (Compact Disc - ReWritable) Much like a floppy disc or hard drive, data can be written and rewritten to these discs, allowing for a very large yet portable medium of data storage.

The last book known as the "White Book," is a plan for the future of compact disc technology. It outlines what is known as video compact discs, and contains the standard of data compression that is used to display large amounts of audio and video on a home computer. This concept more or less morphed into what is now known as DVD (Digital Video Drives,) a technology produced primarily by Sony, Phillips and Toshiba. While not compatible with the standard CD-ROM drives used in computers, it did achieve what the White Book had outlined for the future.

A pattern is developed from these electric impulses, and the CD-ROM drive returns this pattern to the computer as a string of 1s and 0s. This binary or digital data is in turn interpreted by the software controlling the CD-ROM drive, and then translated into something the computer can use, be it an executable program, an image, or a sound file.

The Yellow Stickee Diary of a Mad Secretary", by Rosa Maria Arenas, is the mini graphic journal of an office worker/artist, exhibited July 7 - August 25, 2013, at the Michigan Institute of Contemporary Art (MICA) Gallery in Lansing, Michigan. The 41 drawings displayed are a tiny percentage of the more than 2000 original drawings that constitute the Yellow Stickee Diary Project which Arenas created while working temp jobs from 1994 to 2005. Printed with archival inks on archival paper, the reproductions include "stickee sized" (3" x 5") framed prints and enlargements of the original drawings (which were all done on post-it notes).

Rebecca Murtaugh, a California artist who uses Post-it notes in her artwork, in 2001 created an installation by covering her whole bedroom with $1000 worth of the notes, using the ordinary yellow for objects she saw as having less value and neon colors for more important objects, such as the bed.[10]

One such work, by the artist R. B. Kitaj, sold for £640 in an auction, making it the most valuable Post-it note on record.[14]

Analogues of Post-it notes have also been used in technology in the form of desktop notes which are computer applications developed to allow users to put virtual notes on their computer desktop. These computerized versions of Post-it notes include 3M's own "Post-it Brand Software Notes", "Stickies" in Mac OS, "Sticky Notes" in Windows,[15] or other non-free applications like ShixxNOTE.[16] Additionally, some web applications have developed Post-it sort notes for online use.

This disc was taken over by nearly all markets across the globe, especially the Europe and the United States consumer market. The first successful CD to be launched was Brothers in Arms in 1985.A compact disc (CD) is a popular form of digital storage media used for computer files, pictures, and music. The plastic platter is read and written to by a laser in a CD drive. It comes in several varieties including CD-ROM, CD-R, and CD-RW.  As with most new technologies, one reason for the slow spread of CDs was their steep price tags. The Sony CDP-101 player sold for the equivalent of $730 when it first hit Japanese shelves in 1982. Accounting for inflation, that's about $1,750 today. The audio CDs themselves were $15, which is $35 in 2012 dollars.

When Volvo CEO Gunnar Engelau lost a relative in a car crash, he recruited Bohlin to boost safety.

unused except by race car drivers

late 1950s, only two-point lap belts were available

he knew the limitations of lap belts

focused on combating the harsh deceleration forces of crashes.

Within a year

widely-used life-saver

industry's most effective

He died in 2002 at the age of 82.

Members of the Hall of Fame selection committee

Nils Bohlin's seat belt saves lives.

Russell was an avid music listener.

Russell envisioned a system that would record and replay sounds without physical contact between its parts; and he saw that the best way to achieve such a system was to use light.