Rarely happens that a very technical topic, such as adhesive technology gets the attention of filmmakers and moviegoers. This is exactly what happened in 1997, when the American comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion was presented to the public.
The story revolves around the white lie of two friends, Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow) from the title, who are unsuccessful since their high school years: the two blondes come up with the idea to pose at the high school reunion as the inventors of Post-it Notes. But really, who invented the product in real life?
Two colleagues of 3M take the credit: Arthur Fry wanted to paste a church hymn on a wall in a way so that the paper containing the hymn would not be damaged after removing the gluing but would not even fall to the ground until then. His co-inventor, Spencer Silver, engineer, was developing adhesives at the company. In 1968, they combined the two ideas (a piece of paper + sticking), and the world got to know the typically yellow-colored notes in 1979. The solution was considered to be revolutionary in its field because the adhesion did not leave a mark and Post-it Notes proved to be reusable.
It is interesting to note that the product could have been world-famous in 1977, however, consumers did not get hooked, but two years later, during its re-introduction, 3M supported the journey of the whole new adhesive paper with a massive advertising campaign.
Since then, Post-it Notes have become one of the symbols of office life, while the 1997 movie has become iconic in the last two decades. The immortality of 3M’s product is proven by the fact that the use of virtual Post-it Notes in the digital world, on computers has also become widespread.
