Adhesive History

Welcome to Becoming Sage, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary! My name is Elan Baumgarten. Thank you for joining us for the last episode of our first season- all about the adhesive memory of glue, tape, and the stapler! This episode will be split up into three separate sections. While most adhesives are usually made with chemical compounds, glue is usually organic. Despite this, adhesives are usually thrown under the umbrella term of “glue”, despite it being possibly inaccurate. Early glues were made from plant-based materials. The earliest known glue is tracked over 70,000 years into the past - it was made from plant gum and red ochre. It was found in South Africa. After this, people began experimenting, trying to innovate and create new ways to bind things together. Animal remains, bones, hooves, teeth. You name it, they probably tried it. In the Medieval Ages, monks even used egg yolks to bind book pages together. Fish glue was invented, but the consistency wasn’t quite right for glue. Ironically, fish air bladders proved to be very handy for glue. It was also white - and tasteless. I wonder why they decided to test the taste! Glue has been used throughout history to repair ceramics, create furniture, and was even used by the militaries of the world wars! Hide glue used only the skin of animals and was a very popular furniture glue in ancient Egypt! Unfortunately, it was not waterproof and smelled horrendously! Today, adhesive glues are used across industries from electronic production to the construction of airplanes! With leaps in medical technology, glues can even be used in place of sutures when a surgeon needs to close a wound. Dr. Horace Day is first credited with the invention of tape in 1845. He attached adhesive rubber strips to fabric, this new invention was called surgical tape! His invention fueled the flames of innovation for future tape creators. Earle Dickson invented the Band-Aid in 1921. He invented it because the tape that Day invented kept falling off his wife’s fingers when she cut them cooking. In 1923, Richard Drew first dreamed up masking tape and in 1925 it became a reality. This was his solution to a dilemma for car painters who had trouble with making clean lines on multi-color paint jobs. It took time for him to test different levels of adhesiveness - but one thing was clear. The auto body shops wanted it to be more adhesive - not less. It was at this same time that the name Scotch was developed. Another common tape, Duct Tape, was invented in 1942 by Johnson and Johnson to help soldiers seal and repair equipment with a waterproof tape. Now finally, for something a little less sticky and a whole lot more pointy! The stapler was first brought into the world in 1866. Its creation was ordered by King Louis XV and was produced by the Novelty Manufacturing Company. Louis XV needed a way to keep papers together, and while glues and synthetic adhesives had served that purpose for time immemorial, they failed to do so with grace when it came to large stacks of paper. Ironically, Louis’ stapler was far from efficient. It held a single staple at a time - and it wasn’t just any staple, but a staple made of gold - truly a whimsy invention! In the same year, a man named George McGill would design a bendable paper fastener - an early staple, if you will. And a year later, he licensed the delivery method. Over the next decade or so his invention would be launched into the markets and receive quite a bit of praise. It wasn’t until 1895 that the stapler would see substantial improvement. This next iteration of the stapler was developed in Cincinnati by the E.H. Hotchkiss Company. The reason it was so impressive was because they solved the issue of loading up new staples. They utilized a string of staples that were all put in at once, and deployed using springs. In 1896, just one year later, Thomas Briggs created the wire stitcher. This tool bound books together using a wire. His invention prompted him to later create the Boston Wire Stitcher Company. In 1903, the very first foot-pedaled wire stitcher was released. Finally, in 1937, the first modern stapler was born over seventy years after the very first stapler’s commission was ordered by King Louis XV. Jack Linsky was responsible for this design, a design that allowed the user of the stapler to lift the roof of the device and insert the staples. His design was so revolutionary that there hasn’t been another design good enough to compete with it for 87 years. Thank you for listening to Becoming Sage, this is Elan Baumgarten. We would also like to thank you for listening throughout our first season of podcasting, and we can’t wait to bring more episodes of Becoming Sage again in the fall! Keep your notifications on so that you don’t miss us when we return - so that you can listen to the ordinary become extraordinary!