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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.

When it became clear that Post-It Notes were viable in a commercial atmosphere, 3M's marketing went to work.

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.

Five years later, the company found a place to put that sticky…and it stuck.  Worldwide distribution began in 1980 and since then no one has quite been able to re-create it. 

There’s only one other Post-it plant in the world and it’s in France, which supplies Europe.  Every other Post-it note in the world comes from Cynthiana, Kentucky.  It started as a fluke in 1968 when a research scientist working for 3M – a copy machine company then – came up with the famed sticky.

“If you look on the back of the package, you’ll see Made in the USA,” Ann Getting, Plant Manager for 3M in Cynthiana said.  “You’ll know it was a 3M Cynthiana product.”

“Most people will be within three yards of a 3M product nearly all of the time, day and night,” Getting said.  “And not even know it.”

Now 3M makes more than 1,000 Post-it products for more than 150 countries. The original color remains the best-seller and it was a fluke too–the scrap paper that scientist used to test the sticky for the first time just happened to be yellow.

“We’ve been successful because of the people in Kentucky,”

“That’s the secret of this plant…to change and adapt to meet customer needs. We keep improving so we have a future right here in Cynthiana.” Getty said.

The idea for sticky notes originated by accident. Dr. Spencer Silver, a Senior Scientist in the 3M Corporation’s Research Lab, discovered a repositionable adhesive in 1968. It hadn’t been his goal to do so, because at the time 3M’s philosophy was "the stickier the better.

After several sample tests across the country, Post-It® Notes were launched nationwide in 1980. Nearly 30 years later, the line has expanded from the original square, canary-yellow sticky notes to 61 other colors and 25 different shapes; they now generate more than one billion dollars of revenue every year! The vast success of sticky notes is no fluke.

One thing is a definite: you have thousands of exciting options to choose from!

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.