Borden called their product, Cascorez Glue. The early packaging was a glass bottle with a separate ice cream pop-type wooden applicator. It was attached to the side of the bottle with a rubber band. Elmer, the bull, was not featured on the original product. Consumers liked the fact that liquid glue was easier to use that paste, and they liked the white glue better than the other glues on the market.
It was also smelly because it was made from fish byproducts. In contrast, the white glue from Borden spread nicely and dried clear. The glue could be washed off school desks and cleaned from hands as well. Consumers complained about the breakable glass bottle and the separate stick applicator that could easily be lost.
Borden soon remedied those problems. By the time, glue was being manufactured by Borden, the Borden Company was a relatively big conglomerate. Instead of one sole inventor, a team of chemists worked on the development of the glue. Ashton Stull , vice president of the chemical division from , oversaw the team. Borden never patented the glue perhaps to keep the ingredients under wraps , and Stull was never listed as the inventor.
To understand how a bull named Elmer came to sell glue for Borden, we need to look at the dairy business. The Borden Company had learned the importance of a strong marketing campaign with their milk products. Milk in the early 20th century often carried disease. Tuberculosis was common as were various illnesses that the cows picked up from the unsanitary conditions on farms.
Borden was one of the first dairies to purchase a farm where the milk was being pasteurized. The formula now of Elmer's All-Glue doesn't involve use of any animal product. The product is made of PVA-based synthetic glue. PVA is a thermoplastic, a rubbery synthetic polymer. These synthetic glues are more efficient, and have the environment friendly nature.
The strength, price and efficiency have made this synthetic glue as the most preferred liquid adhesive today. Nano Technology This brand new adhesive technology roots back into the adhesive behavior of the gecko, the reptile.
The adhesive manufacturers are trying to develop synthetic setae, just like those Geckos have around their feet which are responsible for their adhesive behavior. Their adhesiveness doesn't involve any glue like substance; neither does it require use of an animal extract. The technology uses the concept of molecular adhesion. The basic principle of this concept: If the two closely located substances start exhibiting adhesive properties, a fluid is not required to initiate molecular adhesion.
Gecko-tape is times stronger than the regular adhesives we use now. Share Flipboard Email. Mary Bellis. Inventions Expert. Mary Bellis covered inventions and inventors for ThoughtCo for 18 years. She is known for her independent films and documentaries, including one about Alexander Graham Bell. Updated February 20, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Bellis, Mary. The History of Adhesives and Glue. Important Innovations and Inventions, Past and Present. Famous Black Inventors of the 19th- and Early 20th-Centuries.
The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. A survey taken in the s showed that virtually every American knew her name. She embodied a wholesomeness that spoke to Americans of the time. And that was important, because the product she represented had a history of carrying disease.
The product? And the spokesperson? Elsie the cow. Pasteurization had brought milk-spread disease from fresh milk under control, but public perceptions change slowly. At the forefront of changing these perceptions was the Borden Company, a successful producer of canned milk seeking to build a new market for fresh.
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