#8 – Post-It Notes

It’s hard to find a person that doesn’t have at least a pack of post-it notes in their home. They are essential for all people that don’t have perfect memory. Although they are a simple and practical invention, they were discovered by accident and weren’t even considered useful at first. Namely, a scientist named Spencer Silver was working on a type of a very strong adhesive that would be used when manufacturing planes. All he managed to do was create a relatively weak adhesive, and ended up abandoning the project. However, a chemical engineer named Arthur Fly immediately saw the potential of the weaker adhesive. More specifically, he was a member of a church choir, but was known to be very clumsy. He figured that he would use the adhesive on his choir songbook in order to prevent the papers from falling out, and he succeeded in doing exactly that. The rest is history.