history of cotton swabs

When I was a child, my grandmother always placed a small wad of cotton over the untreated end of a wooden match. She then would use the covered match end to clean out dirty ears, apply alcohol to cuts and bruises, place a dab of mint oil on the outside of a stuffy nose, and a multitude of other uses. I wonder if my grandmother knew that several decades earlier, in 1923, a woman named Mrs. Gerstenzang placed wads of cotton on the ends of toothpicks. She then used the cotton to clean her baby's ears. Her husband Leo saw what she was doing, and he got the idea to invent a cotton swab for the same purpose. And that's how the history of Q-Tips got started.

Leo Gerstenzang's original cotton swab was a wooden stick with cotton wrapped around both ends. He named his invention "Baby Gays" and he founded the Leo Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Company in New York City. Gerstenzang sold the disposable cotton swabs in bundles.

It's not known why Gerstenzang chose that name. Obviously, the term "gay" didn't have the same meaning as it does today. Apparently not happy with his first choice, the inventor later added "Q- Tip in front of "Baby Gays." The "Q" supposedly stands for "quality." The word "tips" refers to the cotton at the ends.

Finally, Gerstenzang shortened the name of his cotton swabs to just "Q-Tips" and that name has never changed.

Leo Gerstenzang's cotton swab business thrived. Consumers used the products to clean babies' outer ears, their nostrils and other hard-to-reach places.

In 1958, his company bought Paper Sticks Ltd. of England. The company's machinery was shipped to America and converted to manufacture Q-Tips paper sticks. Now, consumers could choose between wooden sticks or paper when they purchased them.

Chesebrough-Ponds purchased the Q-Tips company in 1962. The production of the cotton swabs was then moved from New York to Missouri. In 1974, Chesebrough-Ponds relocated part of the plant to Puerto Rico. Then, in 1987, Unilever bought the Chesebrough-Ponds company.

Sometime during the 1980's, the wooden sticks were done away with. They are now made with paper sticks. Unilever has also changed the packaging, but other than that, they have remained pretty much the same. Q-Tips cotton swabs are the most popular product for babies in the United States.

Since that time, Q-Tips cotton swabs have continued to be manufactured and be a successful product on store shelves. The company produces nearly twenty-six billion cotton swabs every year. But they are no longer used exclusively for babies. Americans use them to apply glue on craft projects, clean out electronic devices, remove make up, clean computer keyboards, remove dirt and debris from their dogs' and cats' outer ears, dust collectibles, apply ointments, paint models, and more. Q-Tips are the best product yet for getting to hard-to-reach places.

They say that "necessity is the mother of invention." But, still, it's rather fascinating that this all started because a mother needed something safe to clean her baby's ears with. And her makeshift cotton swab inspired her husband Leo Gerstenzang to invent a real swab and put it on the market for consumers across America to use.