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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.

Science has been a part of my life from the time I was four years old... just knowing how things work, having a curiosity. And my curiosity has been limitless and that’s quite a handicap because there are times in your life when you have to specialize. But I literally want to know everything and only in recent years have I finally realized that I’m never going to know everything. In fact, the older I get, and the more stupid I find out that I am. But science, the understanding of how things work, what things are, has been crucially important to me. So, I started out with fantasy; I’ve always loved science fiction. I’ve always known that I was going to be an engineer, so I went to a technical high school so that I could take every kind of shop and learn how to work with my hands, learned about materials, and I always knew that I was going to go to an engineering school and get an engineering degree. 

Science can be interesting. Science can be fun. If, in fact, teachers learn how to present science in that way and learn how to make people curious and make it enjoyable, I think more people will get involved. But it’s not important that everybody become a scientist. Everybody doesn’t have to be a mathematician. Make it interesting enough so the people that have that interest, that have that talent do latch onto the wonderful world that will open up if they dig into science and mathematics. The teaching of science, mathematics, of anything—there really is no difference from a game. If you make a game dull, if you make it uninteresting, if you don’t have something that grabs people... then they won’t get interested and they’ll go do something else. So, I don’t see why teaching should be any different than creating games. Creating a curriculum ought to be the same as creating a game. Make it interesting, make it fun, make it a challenge; all of those things. All of the attributes of playing a game are the things that draw people into learning and I think that’s what we ought to do. We ought to somehow coalesce the concept of teaching with the concept of game playing, and we’re going to find that a lot more of our youngsters are going to get interested in learning and specifically about science, mathematics, technology.

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.