best invention in last 50 years

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What is the greatest invention of the last fifty years?

                                                                                                

Post it notes appear everywhere in our lives without us paying much attention to them. They are little sheets of paper, most commonly and originally in the bright yellow colour, which temporarily attach to documents and many other items without causing any damage. They are excellent substitutes to bookmarks and great for sticking on the backs of friends with little messages to the public most commonly ‘kick me’. However, post it notes were not always this successful and popular. It took two men named Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry - and an accidental invention - to eventually get the notes out on the market and bought by the public.

During the year of 1970 Spencer Silver worked at 3M laboratories which is a glue company located in America. Spencer Silver was set the task of developing an incredibly strong adhesive like no other on the market. However, Silver wasn’t very successful. In fact it was a complete failure and instead of creating an ultra-strong adhesive, he created a new super weak adhesive. At first glance, this appeared to be of no use to the company as it was a weaker substance to those already produced by 3M. ‘What a waste’ was the first impression this glue gave the company. They were looking for bigger and better glue types and Silver had done anything but this.  However, the smart man that Silver was (though some say not so smart as he wasn’t able to develop the strong glue he was supposed to in the first place) he did not discard of his invention immediately. The glue was left aside and the ultimate inspiration for the post-it sticky notes did not come till a few years later. This was possibly one of the smartest moves made by man in the last fifty years.

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 Another 3M scientist who went by the name of Arthur Fry had attended one of Spencer Silver’s meetings and had learnt about the super weak glue. Four years after the actual development of the weak glue in 1974, Arthur Fry was singing in the church choir the usual hymns from his hymnal. He had placed several markers in places he needed to keep track of in order to keep up with the melodious singing of the rest of the church choir. However, these markers kept annoying poor Mr Fry by falling out all over the place during the church ...

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