History
Inspired by a speech by antiseptic advocate Joseph Lister, Robert Wood Johnson, joined brothers James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson to create a line of ready-to-use surgical dressings in 1885. The company produced its first products in 1886 and incorporated in 1887.
Robert Wood Johnson served as the first president of the company. He worked to improve sanitation practices in the nineteenth century, and lent his name to a hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Upon his death in 1910, he was succeeded in the presidency by his brother James Wood Johnson until 1932, and then by his son, Robert Wood Johnson II.
Robert Wood Johnson's granddaughter, Mary Lea Johnson Richards, was the first baby to appear on a Johnson & Johnson baby powder label. His great-grandson, Jamie Johnson, made a documentary called Born Rich about the experience of growing up as the heir to one of the world's greatest fortunes.
Read more about this topic: Johnson & Johnson
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)