artnership in 1885. They began operations in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1886. They started with 14 employees on the fourth floor of a small building that had been a wallpaper factory. In 1887, the Company was incorporated as Johnson & Johnson. The company then entered the surgical dressings industry. The first products turned out were improved medicinal plasters containing medical compounds mixed in an adhesive, followed by a revolutionary surgical dressing. The company wanted to improve antiseptic surgical procedures and so designed a soft, absorbent cotton and gauze dressing that could be mass produced and shipped in quantity to hospitals of every size and to individual physicians. The company also promoted antiseptic surgical procedures far and wide, and to this end, the Company published a book, Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment, in 1888 which for many years remained the standard text on antiseptic practices (Johnson & Johnson, "Company History").
Robert Wood Johnson died in 1910. He had d
...