3M Company
Diversified Industrial Manufacturing & InnovationFounded 1902- Updated June 2026
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: June 2026
CorpDigest
3M Company
Company History
Founded 1902 in Maplewood, Minnesota
Last reviewed: 2026-06-03 · By Swet Parvadiya
With no product and dwindling capital, the five founders — Henry Bryan, Hermon Cable, John Dwan, William McGonagle, and Lucius Ordway — had to reconsider everything. 3M began making abrasive products, learning the chemistry of adhesion and surface treatment through necessity rather than ambition.
Lucius Ordway was born in 1849 and established himself as a successful plumbing supply merchant in Saint Paul, Minnesota before becoming one of five co-founders of the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company in 1902. While his four co-founders progressively reduced their involvement as the company struggled through its failed mining venture and difficult early manufacturing years, Ordway remained committed, providing crucial personal capital injections that prevented bankruptcy on multiple occasions between 1902 and 1914. His patient financial support — combined with his genuine belief in William Lester McKnight's management philosophy — created the conditions that allowed 3M to survive its early crisis, develop its first successful products, and establish the innovation culture that would eventually produce Scotch tape, Post-it Notes, and thousands of other globally recognized products. Ordway died in 1927, long before the full magnitude of his contribution to American industrial history was apparent.
John Dwan was one of the five original founders of 3M, contributing his legal expertise and local Minnesota business connections to the venture's organization in 1902. His role was primarily administrative and organizational rather than technical or financial, and he was less central to 3M's survival during its difficult early years than Lucius Ordway, who provided the critical capital infusions. Dwan's primary legacy in 3M's history is his contribution to the company's legal and organizational establishment during its founding period. He represents the entrepreneurial optimism that characterized resource extraction ventures in early twentieth century Minnesota, when mineral discoveries along the Lake Superior shore regularly attracted speculative investment from local businessmen seeking to participate in the region's industrial development.
Five Minnesota businessmen incorporate the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company with the intention of mining corundum abrasive mineral from a deposit on the Lake Superior shore. The mineral deposit proves to contain the wrong stone — anorthosite rather than corundum — immediately invalidating the original business plan.
3M relocates its operations to Saint Paul, Minnesota, establishing the geographic base that it would maintain for the remainder of the twentieth century. The company hires its first dedicated laboratory researcher, reflecting William McKnight's conviction that technical expertise must become an organizational core competency rather than an improvised response to product problems.
Researcher Francis Okie develops Wetordry waterproof sandpaper, the first 3M product to achieve significant commercial success by offering genuine technical differentiation from competing products. The product finds immediate acceptance in automotive body shops and establishes 3M's identity as an innovator in surface preparation materials.
Richard Drew, a 3M laboratory researcher who observed automotive painters struggling with imprecise color boundary masking, develops a pressure-sensitive masking tape that allows clean paint line definition without surface damage upon removal. This product launches 3M's adhesive tape technology platform, which would become one of its most enduring and commercially significant technical domains.
Richard Drew extends his adhesive tape work to create a transparent, pressure-sensitive tape initially called Scotch tape. Introduced during the Great Depression, the product finds immediate consumer acceptance as an economical repair and packaging solution, generating the mass consumer brand awareness that 3M would build on for decades. Scotch tape remains one of the most recognizable brand names in the American household products market more than ninety years after its introduction.
3M is added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, reflecting its status as one of the defining companies of American industrial manufacturing. Inclusion in the Dow — a price-weighted index of thirty major American companies — places 3M alongside the most iconic corporations in U.S. Business history and substantially increases its institutional investor profile and index fund ownership.
After a limited test market launch in 1977 and a national rollout beginning in 1980, Post-it Notes become one of the most successful new product launches in 3M history. The product's repositionable adhesive — discovered accidentally by Spencer Silver in 1968 and applied to a bookmark concept by Art Fry in 1974 — generates billions in cumulative revenue and creates an entirely new office products category. The Post-it story becomes the defining illustration of 3M's innovation culture philosophy.
The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company formally adopts the abbreviated name '3M Company' as its official corporate title, reflecting the reality that the company's identity had long since transcended its original mining origins. The simpler name better reflects the global brand identity that 3M's products — particularly Scotch tape and Post-it Notes — had established in consumer and institutional markets worldwide.
3M dramatically expands N95 respirator production capacity at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately producing more than 2.5 billion respirators between January 2020 and year-end 2021. The company becomes a central figure in federal and state government procurement discussions as healthcare worker protection becomes a national priority. The episode demonstrates both the genuine public health value of 3M's safety product portfolio and the reputational risks of operating in critical supply categories during national emergencies.
3M announces separate landmark settlements addressing its two largest litigation liabilities: a $10.3 billion settlement with municipalities across the United States over PFAS water contamination, to be paid over thirteen years, and a $6.01 billion settlement resolving Combat Arms earplug defect claims from more than 250,000 military veterans. The combined $16.31 billion in settlement obligations represents the largest concurrent litigation burden in American industrial manufacturing history and significantly reshapes 3M's financial profile.
3M completes the spinoff of its healthcare business segment into a separately listed public company named Solventum Corporation in April 2024. The transaction distributes Solventum shares to 3M shareholders on a pro-rata basis and creates a new public healthcare company with approximately $8 billion in annual revenue. 3M retains a minority equity stake in Solventum following the spinoff. The transaction reduces 3M's complexity, allows independent valuation of the healthcare business, and focuses the remaining 3M on its industrial and consumer materials science capabilities.
William Brown, previously President and CEO of Corning Incorporated, is appointed as 3M's Chief Executive Officer in May 2024, succeeding Mike Roman. Brown's appointment signals the board's desire for external perspective and manufacturing operations expertise in leading 3M's restructuring and strategic refocusing. Brown begins implementing portfolio prioritization, operational simplification, and manufacturing network rationalization programs aimed at restoring investor confidence and improving organic revenue growth in priority industrial end markets.
3M acquired Aearo Technologies in 2008 for approximately $1.2 billion to significantly expand its personal protective equipment portfolio, particularly in hearing protection, eye and face protection, and respiratory protection. Aearo was a well-established PPE manufacturer with strong market positions in hearing protection products sold under the E·A·R brand and other safety brands. The acquisition was intended to strengthen 3M's position as a comprehensive personal protective equipment supplier and provide cross-selling opportunities with 3M's existing safety product portfolio across industrial and construction customer segments.
3M acquired Capital Safety Group in 2015 for approximately $1.6 billion to add fall protection products — including harnesses, lanyards, self-retracting lifelines, and anchoring systems — to its Safety and Industrial segment's personal protective equipment portfolio. Capital Safety was a market leader in fall protection, a rapidly growing segment driven by heightened regulatory enforcement of workplace fall prevention standards by OSHA and equivalent agencies in international markets. The acquisition was consistent with 3M's strategy of building comprehensive safety product portfolios that allow it to serve as a single-source safety supplier for large industrial and construction customers.
3M acquired Cogent Systems in 2010 for approximately $943 million to add biometric identification technology — including fingerprint recognition, iris scanning, and facial recognition systems — to its portfolio of government and law enforcement solutions. The acquisition was part of 3M's strategy to expand into security and identity verification technology markets that were experiencing rapid demand growth from government agencies implementing biometric passport programs, border control systems, and law enforcement identification databases.
3M acquired Scott Safety from Tyco International in 2017 for approximately $2 billion, adding self-contained breathing apparatus products, supplied-air respirators, and gas and flame detection equipment to its Safety and Industrial portfolio. Scott Safety was a market leader in respiratory protection for firefighters and hazardous materials responders, as well as in gas detection products for oil and gas, chemical, and mining industries. The acquisition was designed to give 3M a stronger position in the fire service and industrial emergency response market segments where Scott's brand equity and product reputation were particularly strong.
3M was founded in 1902 in Two Harbors, Minnesota, as a mineral-mining venture. When the corundum ore proved worthless, the founders relocated to Duluth to try sandpaper manufacturing, then to Saint Paul, and finally to Maplewood, Minnesota — where the company's global headquarters remain today.
3M stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, reflecting its 1902 origins as a mineral-mining venture in Two Harbors, Minnesota. The company legally adopted the shorter '3M' brand name over time as its operations expanded far beyond mining into adhesives, electronics, healthcare, and safety products.
3M's founders spent the company's first decade on the brink of collapse after discovering their Minnesota mine contained no viable corundum ore. Investor Lucius Ordway injected $35,000 of personal capital in 1905 to keep the company alive, enabling a pivot to abrasive sandpaper manufacturing that eventually became the foundation of 3M's global industrial empire.
3M's defining milestones include: launching Wetordry sandpaper in 1921 (its first patented product), inventing masking tape in 1925, creating Scotch transparent tape in 1930, establishing the 15% innovation rule under CEO William McKnight, acquiring Aearo Technologies in 2008, and spinning off its healthcare division as Solventum in 2024 — along with settling PFAS contamination claims for $10.3 billion.
3M's evolution was driven by its R&D culture. After the mining failure, the company built expertise in abrasives, then adhesives, eventually establishing a policy (the '15% rule') allowing employees to spend 15% of work time on personal innovation projects. This produced masking tape, Scotch tape, Post-it Notes, and thousands of other inventions — transforming a failed mining company into a $70 billion industrial conglomerate across safety, electronics, healthcare, and consumer goods.