Activity 3.3.1:  Have you ever wondered about the changes in technology that your grandparents have experienced? Have you ever discussed life without a microwave or television with your great grandparents? Inventions and innovations are the key to the changes in technology. Inventions involve an idea that results in the creation of a new product or service; while innovations involve the modification of or combination of current inventions. For instance, in the early 20^th century, football helmets were composed of thin leather without padding (invention); now they are composed of several layers of plastic and padding (innovation).

Activity 3.3.2:  In 1880, Joseph Lawrence, a Missouri physician,  was one of many who attended the lectures given by Sir Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, in the United States. Like Lister he was appalled by the lack of hygiene among surgeons. They routinely performed surgery in street clothes with bare hands and even permitted spectators in the operating rooms. For surgical dressings they used pads of pressed sawdust, a waste product from mill floors. Surgical instruments were washed in soapy water but not heat sanitized. In many hospitals postoperative mortality was as high as 90%. After hearing Lister’s lectures and realizing there had to be a better way to improve the survival rate of patients, Dr. Lawrence developed an antibacterial liquid that would later be known as Listerine.

Also at one of those early lectures was a thirty year old pharmacist from Brooklyn, Robert Johnson. Thinking that sawdust off mill floors was not such a great idea, he persuaded his two brothers – James, a civil engineer, and Edward, an attorney – to join him in his attempt to develop and market a dry, prepackaged, antiseptic surgical dressing. By the mid 1880s the brothers had formed a company known as Johnson & Johnson and you no doubt know the rest of the story. Except that the brothers did not develop what we now call Band-Aids^®. In 1920, a young employee in the purchasing department, Earle Dickson, married a rather accident-prone young woman who cut or burn herself quite frequently in the kitchen. James Johnson heard about a homemade bandage Earle created that would be small, easy to apply, would stay put, and remain sterile. He sought him out and now you know the rest of the story.