"This is the mystery of the modern disposable diaper: how does something so small do so much?"
Malcolm Gladwell, journalist
It took a Swedish paper mill, a Connecticut housewife, and a Proctor & Gamble engineer to free parents from the shackles of diaper duty.
Paper mill Paulistrom Bruk put pads of treated paper into rubber pants and produced the first diaper product destined for the bin in 1936.These disposable paper pads failed to impress the baby supply industry. A more commercially successful product came along more than a decade later, thanks to an inventive housewife named Marion Donovan (1917-1998).
Forgoing rubber pants for nylon and skipping paper entirely, Donovan created the "Boater" in 1946. Donovan's simple nylon diaper covers far surpassed rubber pants for one simple reasons—diaper rash.
"We couldn't say it, but it did cure diaper rash, and many doctors recommended it," said Donovan of her Boater. When it was launched on the market in 1949, the Boater was popular with parents. Donovan hit the jackpot when she sold the rights for $1 million in 1951.
Donovan set her sights on making a diaper that was disposable and leak-proof. She turned to treated paper, soon showing prototypes to various companies only to be shot down. By the late 1950s, one of those companies, Proctor & Gamble, had picked up the paper diaper idea and asked engineer Victor Mills (1897-1997) to perfect it. In 1961, Proctor & Gamble introduced the world to Pampers®.
