Through sheer luck and ingenuity, two employees at the multinational company invented the Post-it note. In 1974, Art Fry put pieces of paper between the pages to mark his favorite church hymns but they would fall out of the hymnal. Then Fry came across an adhesive invented by another scientist named Dr.Silver. The adhesive could stick to surfaces like glue, but did not leave any leftover residue. The central compound of Silver's adhesive was an acrylate copolymer. With experiments with microspheres he could make adhesive that wasn't too sticky or too week. It took years for 3M to successfully market the Post-it note.