Spencer Silver - The 3M Employee Who Helped Invent the Post-it Note

Spencer Silver, the 3M employee who helped invent the glue for the Post-it Note, is gone after sticking around way too long.

Spencer Silver’s adhesive helped propel Post-it Notes to become the most popular office supply disgruntled employees like to steal when they can’t fit a stapler down their pants. The 80 year-old died at his home surrounded by a lifetime of tacky residue.

According to his family, the last few years saw the aging inventor become yellowed and detached from friends, dying without even leaving a note.

Born during a bygone era when people didn’t have repositionable pressure-sensitive adhesive sheet materials, Silver quickly grew to hate the thumb tack industry, or as he called it: “Big Thumbtack.”

But it wasn’t until 1957, when he witnessed the ominous threat of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik, that he pledged to help his country by earning a Ph.D in organic chemistry and one day ridding the world of Dream Walls and Vision Boards with unsightly push pins.

In 2013, Silver told CNN that his invention took off so rapidly at 3M that it, “left a lot of people in marketing and sales gasping a bit.” It later turned out they were gasping because marketing and sales was right next to 3M’s teargas silo.

Hoping to exploit the success of Post-It Notes, 3M introduced other less popular spin-off products such as:

I Hate My Life Notes

Nutty Fudge Notes

Sticky Penis Press Pads

Memo Square Paper Glue Piles

There Goes Another Tree Notes

Munchhausen By Proxy Peel-Pads

Acrylate Copolymer Microspheres Without Gluten

Adhesive Pad Paper Scribble Things

Stuff-It Notes

and

Asbestos Cancer Notes With Nuts

The deceased requested he be buried beneath a bunch of other notes he never had time to read reminding him not to die.

---

Press on the pretty picture to buy my book before climate change destroys all human life on the planet.