A brief history of the disposable diaper

According to the unearthed cultural relics, “diapers” have been invented since the time of primitive humans. After all, primitive people had to feed their babies, and after feeding, they had to solve the problem of baby’s stool. However, ancient people did not pay so much attention to it. Of course, there is no such condition to pay attention to it, so the material of diapers is basically directly derived from nature.

The most readily available things are leaves and bark. At that time, the vegetation was luxuriant, so you could easily make a lot of them and tie them under the baby’s crotch. When the parents were hunting experts, left the fur of wild animals and made it into a “leather urine pad”. Careful parents will intentionally collect some soft moss, wash it and dry it in the sun, wrap it with leaves and put it under the baby’s buttocks as a urine pad.

So in the 19th century, mothers in the western society were lucky to first use the pure cotton diapers specially made for babies. These diapers were not dyed, they were more soft and breathable, and the size was regular. The merchants also gave the diaper folding tutorial, which was a big sale at a time.

In the 1850s, photographer Alexander Parks accidentally invented plastic in an accidental experiment in a dark room. At the beginning of the 20th century, a heavy rain caused Scott Paper Company in the United States to accidentally invent toilet paper due to improper preservation of a batch of paper during transportation. These two accidental inventions provided raw materials for the Swede Boristel who invented disposable diapers in 1942.Boristel’s design idea is probably as follows: the diapers are divided into two layers, the outer layer is made of plastic, and the inner layer is an absorbent pad made of toilet paper.This is the first diaper in the world.

After World War II, the Germans invented a kind of fiber tissue paper, which is characterized by its soft texture, breathability and strong water absorption. This kind of fiber tissue paper, originally used in industry, has inspired people who focus on solving the baby’s defecation problem to use this material to make diapers. The middle of the diapers is folded with multilayer fiber cotton paper, fixed with gauze, and made into shorts, which is very close to the shape of today’s diapers.

It is the cleaning company that commercializes diapers in real sense. The R&D department of the company has further reduced the cost of diapers, making some families finally use disposable diapers that no longer need hand washing.

The 1960s witnessed the rapid development of manned space technology. The development of aerospace technology has also stimulated the rapid development of other technology industries when solving the problem of astronauts eating and drinking in outer space. Nobody expected that manned spaceflight could improve baby’s diapers.

So in the 1980s, Tang Xin, a Chinese engineer, invented a paper diaper for the American space suit. Each diaper can absorb up to 1400ml of water. Diapers are made of polymer materials, representing the highest level of material technology at that time.

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Post time: Nov-09-2022