Home | Hughes Enterprises Blog | Ever Wondered What 3M Actually Stood For?
3M was formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company and the company itself has been around since 1902. Founded in a Lake Superior town in Minnesota, 5 businessmen founded a company to mine mineral for grinding wheel abrasives. While the sandpaper business didn’t exactly kick off, the company encouraged all it’s employees to innovate on their own and then bring their ideas to the table. In 1925, a young lab assistant, Richard Drew, invented masking tape which was the catalyst to all of 3M’s future success.
The trademark yellow color was also an accident! Geoff Nicholson explains that the real reason Post-it notes were yellow was simply because the lab next door to where they were working, “had some scrap yellow paper – that’s why they were yellow; and when we went back and said ‘hey guys, you got any more scrap yellow paper?’ they said ‘you want any more go buy it yourself’, and that’s what we did, and that’s why they were yellow”.
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