Nappy days – An Irishman’s Diary on 50 years of the disposable nappy

Parents everywhere have reason to be grateful to Robert C Duncan and Norma L Baker for taking out patent 3,180,335 from the US Patent Office 50 years ago today.

In fact, there are probably few people today under 50 who would have been cloth-nappy babies as a result of that patent, because it was for a disposable diaper or, in Ireland, the UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Zimbabwe, “nappy”.

Disposable nappies did not begin with Duncan’s patent. In fact, they had been around for 20 years or more before that in one form or another. The second World War gave particular impetus to their development as mothers wanted freedom from washing nappies so that they could work outside the home and have more time to travel.

An important step in 1946 was Indiana woman Marion Donovan’s “Boater”, made from a shower curtain from her bathroom, essentially a plastic cover put on outside a nappy. A very significant stage came a year later when a British housewife, Valerie Hunter Gordon, came up with “Paddi”, a disposable pad of cellulose wadding covered in cotton wool worn inside an adjustable plastic nappy closed by press studs or snaps.

Old parachutes

Remarkably, she used old parachutes initially and, when she could not interest a big manufacturer, she made 400 herself with her sewing machine on her kitchen table.

In late 1949, Robinsons of Chesterfield took on production and Paddi proved a great success until “all in one” nappies came along. During the 1950s, other companies could see the profit potential in disposable nappies and Johnson and Johnson, Playtex and others entered the market.

But it was Procter and Gamble that made the breakthrough when its researcher Victor Mills got his research and development department to work on developing the first high-quality affordable disposable nappy in 1956.

At the time, only 1 per cent of nappies changed in the US were disposables. The Procter and Gamble researchers trademarked their new product “Pampers” and took out the patent in 1961.

This was the product that Duncan and Baker improved on with their patent four years later. The patent makes very interesting reading and indicates the extent to which they had researched and planned their changes, all of which they illustrated with detailed drawings.

They said that disposable nappies were generally speaking of two types – rectangular or contoured. The rectangular’s advantages were that it combined economy of manufacture with considerable absorptive area and absorbent material. But it was difficult to apply to an infant and somewhat uncomfortable and unattractive.

Also, its width allowed the legs to force the nappy down, so that it tended to sag away from the body.

Contoured nappy

The contoured nappy, they said, was easily applied, neat and attractive and minimised the possibility of the legs pushing the nappy away from the body. However, it was expensive to make because of the waste involved in making something of irregular shape and it also had a reduced absorptive area.

Disadvantages common to both shapes, according to Duncan and Baker, were that both were highly susceptible to leakage and seepage of waste matter onto the infant’s clothing, that the absorptive material was prone to become wadded together thus greatly reducing absorptive capacity, and that frequently pieces of wadding were found adhering to the skin of the infant on removal of the nappy.

The object of their initiative was to overcome the shortcomings they had listed and create a nappy that could be easily put on, “neat in appearance, comfortable in use ... and adapted to be disposed of by flushing the absorbent pad down a water closet”.

This is how they described the nappy: “a disposable diaper comprising a thin flexible back sheet of waterproof material attached to a pad of absorbent material, the combined back sheet and pad being folded into a box-pleat configuration by means of a multiplicity of longitudinal folds, the back sheet having oppositely disposed side-flap portions adapted to overlie the outermost areas of the uppermost sections of the pleat”.

Duncan and Baker’s patent and the nappy produced by Procter and Gamble based on it was not the perfect disposable nappy, and more improvements were made over the past half-century, but it was a very significant milestone that has led to Pampers being probably the leading diaper brand worldwide, serving some 30 million babies in more than 100 countries.

It has not solved all of the problems of mothers and fathers the world over but has led to their lives being made that little bit easier.