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How does silver turn to gold?  The same way failure turns to success, apparently.  By sticking to it.  Or rather, not sticking to it.  It’s complicated.

It’s probably best to go back to the beginning, or maybe before that.  Back when Spencer Silver was in his early days working at The Facility.  In an interview with the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch he told the reporter, “It was part of my job as a researcher to develop new adhesives, and at that time we wanted to develop bigger, stronger, tougher adhesives.  What I created was none of those.”

What he had created in 1968, in fact, was the opposite of those.  What he had created was an adhesive that was strong enough to hold pieces of paper together.  But it wasn’t strong enough to keep them together.  That’s pretty much the opposite of what an adhesive is supposed to do.

Most people would accept the failure and move on to try another solution, or move to a whole new assignment.  Folks in Fort Stockton generally accept their fate and don’t keep going back to the well once it’s been proven that the well is dry.  (Unless a small child has fallen down the well, but that’s the topic of a whole different story.)  But Spencer Silver was convinced that even though the adhesive he’d created did not fulfill the mandate his employer had given him, it had to have a use of some kind.  He just wasn’t sure what it was.  But he kept coming back to the idea.

And then, in 1974, two things happened.  The first one was that Roger went down to Frontier Ford, “Home of the Straight Shooting’ Deal” and ordered a brand new 1974 Ford LTD Country Squire.  Still being a successful chemical engineer at The Facility, he was able to go top shelf when he sat down with Roger at the dealership and filled out the order form.

“I want it finished in Maize Yellow with wood grain paneling and a black vinyl roof over green cloth and vinyl upholstery,” he told Roger.  “It should be powered by a 400ci V8 paired with a three-speed automatic transmission and equipped with power steering, power-assisted front disc brakes, steel 15″ wheels, and a Magic Door Gate as well as air conditioning, a push-button AM/FM stereo, and a Kelsey-Hayes trailer brake controller.”  Roger was writing as fast as he could, but could barely keep up with all the equipment Spencer was adding to the wagon.

“A vinyl top?  On a station wagon?”  Roger asked.  “Are you sure about that?”  Spencer nodded in the affirmative.  “Well, if it ever starts peeling off, you probably have just what it takes to glue it back down!”  Roger laughed.  He wasn’t aware of the situation with the adhesive that could be easily pulled off.

Steel 15″ wheels wearing polished covers were ordered, along with Ultra Premium Touring narrow-whitewall tires. The vehicle was equipped with power steering and braking was taken care of by power-assisted front discs and rear drums.  Yellow was Spencer’s favorite color, so that’s what he wanted the outside of the car to be.  Roger tried to talk him into a black interior to match the unlikely vinyl roof.  But Spencer’s mind was made up.  “I want green cloth on the inside.  “t’s too blazing hot in Fort Stockton in the summer time for a black interior.”

The other thing that took place in 1974, right about the same time Spencer was ordering the Country Squire, was something of an epiphany.  You see, a coworker by the name of Art Fry also served as the Choir Director over at Almost United Methodist Church.  As such, it was his responsibility to be sure that the music for each Sunday’s service was quickly accessible.  He had taken to sticking small scraps of paper in the hymnals and sheet music where each song could be found.

Well the organist was firing up the first hymn of the morning and Gladys Fauntleroy who sang alto in the very first row of the choir less loose with a coughing jag that threatened to make half the congregation sick.  It also blew out all the slips of paper Fry had stuck in the sheet music, marking his place for all the songs that he’d be directing that morning.  

It was just like Acts 2:2, “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.”  Except what filled the house where they were sitting was a multitude of slips of paper.  Pastor Peterson had to cut three minutes out of his sermon to make up for the extra time it took between songs for Spencer to find his place.

But Fry, possibly still intoxicated from the new car smell provided by the Country Squire Spencer had brought him to church in, was inspired rather than peeved.  Although he did move Mrs. Fauntleroy to the back row of the choir.  He figured he could coat the back side of small slips of paper with Spencer’s less than perfect adhesive to mark the pages, and then remove the slips of paper at the end of the service and reuse them the next week.  He could even scribble notes on them, if he needed to.

After several weeks of testing the theory in front of the assembled worshippers at AUMC, Fry was convinced that his idea could have a multitude of other uses, as well.  On his own time, down in the basement of his modest home in RoadRunner Estates, Fry made prototypes of small pads using the adhesive he’d created six years earlier and yellow paper to match the color of Spencer’s new Ford wagon.

Fry provided employees out at The Facility with stacks of the small square canary colored pads to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product.  While it was slow to take off at first, before long folks were using them in all manner of ways.  The idea gained momentum and, in 1977, management determined they would market the product as “Press ’N Peel.”  “The concept went over about as well as vinyl roofs on station wagons,” someone from the management team was heard remarking in the parking lot one day.  Spencer wasn’t sure if the crack was meant to put down his invention, his car, neither, or both.  Engineers generally don’t have a refined palate when it comes to humor.

But once again, the key to success is sticking with something till all the possibilities have been exhausted.  The Facility tried again, this time blanketing the city of Boise, Idaho with the product in a full scale sales blitz.  They’d renamed the removable slips of paper as “Post-it Notes”.  Marketing studies showed that over 90% of people who used them stated that they would buy the product.

In 1980 the product was released all across the United States.  That was followed up with introduction in Canada and Europe in 1981.  In the years that followed a full line of colors were offered that were no longer tied in any way to anything parked in Spencer’s driveway.  Those with a good eye, however, were quick to point out that the wood grain paneling on the sides and rear MagicGate door of the Country Squire were probably the inspiration for coming out with lined versions of Post-it Notes.

Of course, the Post-it Note led to an entire new line of adhesive related products.  In 2010 the inventors of the product were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.  In 2019 the Post-it Ap was awarded the Best Ap of that year by Google Play.

Both Silver and Fry finished out their careers at The Facility, earning the highest accolades and receiving numerous awards throughout the industry.  More importantly, perhaps, is the example that true friends can stick together, and not let what is perceived as failure tear them apart.

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