The Band-Aid

By Irene Monferrer and Berta Moya

Earle Dickson was working as a cotton buyer for the Johnson & Johnson Company when he invented the Band-Aid in 1920. He created it to help his wife Josephine Dickson, who used to cut her fingers when she prepared food in the kitchen.

The first prototype of Band-Aid was not successful, so he changed its design. James Wood Johnson, his boss, liked his idea and decided to produce it with machines (in the beginning it was hand-made). The Band-Aid was widely used in World War II.

Decorated adhesive bandages first appeared in 1951 and nowadays they can be found in a great variety of shapes and sizes.

There was a music band of the same name: Band Aid. This was borrowed from the bandage brand because the musicians wanted to help people in Ethiopia and “try to cure their wounds”. It was founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. They released the song Do They Know Its Christmas? for the holiday season and it became the Christmas number one song in the charts that year. Two other re-recordings of the song, also intended to raise more money for charity, were also successful.