No wonder we want them on our computer screens! Finally, though, in 1979 the company tried calling it Post-It Notes and it became a huge hit, now selling more than 50 billion “sticky” notes each year. It still took a few years to reach the market, but 3M released Post-It Notes in 1977, but no-one knew what the heck it was and the company dropped them. Fellow 3M researcher Art Fry got the inspiration to try using it with paper and since he couldn’t find white paper, he used yellow instead.
Even better, it’s tied in to Outlook and your Microsoft account so it turns out to have some pretty cool additional features too, features that even Evernote might envy.īut first, a tiny bit of trivia! Who invented Post-It notes, and when? The answer is a researcher at 3M named Spencer Silver, who back in 1968 was trying to make a strong adhesive for aerospace work but ended up with something that was easily removed without any sticky residue. But you don’t need to go there at all, because it turns out that Microsoft has already included a Stickies program with Windows 10.
If you’ve checked the Microsoft App Store, you’ll find that there are dozens of post-it type applications available to buy and download, and some even advertise themselves as free.
