A dressing built from familiar materials
The early adhesive dressing was essentially a small first-aid kit in strip form: sticky tape held a gauze pad over a cut. Instead of choosing a finished patch from a box, the user cut off a section of the strip and placed its padded center over the wound. The format made the dressing adjustable, but it also left the final sizing—and the cutting—to the person using it.
That design grew out of a practical problem at home. In 1920, Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson devised a way to make dressings his wife could apply to her frequent minor cuts without assembling tape and gauze separately. The basic idea was to keep those pieces together and ready to use; the long strip was an early way to package that idea.
Convenience moved from the user to the package
A continuous strip offered flexibility: a small nick and a longer scrape did not have to use identical lengths. But a pre-cut patch removed a step. It could be peeled from its backing and applied directly, making the dressing quicker to use and more consistent in shape.
That shift captures the central tradeoff in the early design: custom sizing came at the cost of extra handling. What later became ordinary—the neatly sized patch—was not just a different shape. It moved part of the preparation from the injured person to the manufacturer.
