The bandage on my finger keeps coming off while I cook

Third cut this week, and the gauze is in the soup. — Housewife, 1920

The first Band-Aids were handmade strips 18 inches long, and you cut off your own. In the traditional account, Earle Dickson's new wife, Josephine, kept cutting and burning her fingers in the kitchen, and the gauze and tape of the day wouldn't stay put. Dickson bought cotton for Johnson & Johnson. He stuck gauze pads along surgical tape, laid stiff cloth over it so it wouldn't stick to itself, and rolled it up. Now she could fix her own finger. Good husband. The company sold it nearly the way he made it and took in $3,000 the first year. By 1924 machines were cutting them small. Should have started there.

Noted: the Museum of Modern Art keeps one in its design collection, though it's not on view.