ndrosen

On Thursday, I attended a gathering to hear from Art Fry, co-inventor of the Post-It Note(R). For a while, he attended a one room schoolhouse as a child; he went on to get a degree in chemical engineering. He disabused those present of the notion that his invention was an accident, and explained how he was in a church choir, and had a problem when the slips of paper in his hymnal fell out, so he set out to invent a bookmark that would stick, but not adhere strongly enough to rip the paper when removed. This involved using the microspheres that someone else at 3M had invented, and using the right primer. He needed precision coating, so he invented a new coating device. After that, there were problems with marketing, but the new product did in time catch on.

He also talked about how chemists can often cook. When he was thirteen years old, a golf course had a problem: they had had a good cook and manager, but he died, and with the war on, adults were in the armed forces or working in essential industries, so the golf course took on thirteen year old Art as their cook. Compare that to thirteen year olds today, some of whose parents won’t let them walk to the store alone! (Not that I’m blaming children these days; it’s their elders who are psychologically crippling them.)

Mr. Fry’s interlocutor announced that he had recently had a birthday; two days earlier, on Tuesday, August 19, he had turned ninety-four. We sang “Happy Birthday” for him, and I must say that he was in good mental and physical shape for a man in his nineties.

By the way, I did finish the Office Action I was working on Friday; I posted it for credit Saturday evening.