History and Story Behind Inventions: Band-Aids

About the story behind the invention of the band-aids or adhesive strips, history and biography of the various inventors.

INVENTION: Band-Aids

INVENTOR: Many

YEAR: 1830 to 1874

HOW INVENTED: In a Philadelphia medical journal, 1830, Samuel D. Gross reported his use of medicated adhesive plasters for body fractures. In 1845, Dr. Horace H. Day and Dr. William H. Shecut, of Jersey City, N.J., patented an adhesive plaster painted with rubber dissolved in a solvent, which was marketed by Dr. Thomas Allcock as Allcock's Porous Plaster. In 1848, Dr. John Parker Maynard, of Dedham, Mass., announced a plaster consisting of a fluid derived from gun cotton dissolved in sulfuric ether, brushed on the skin, covered with cotton strips. In 1874, Robert W. Johnson and George J. Seabury, working in East Orange, N.J., developed a medicated adhesive plaster with a rubber base.

In 1886, Johnson left Seabury to set up his own business, Johnson & Johnson, and his Band-Aids with their rubber base hit the commercial jackpot.