Kilmer House

In commemoration of the 125th anniversary of Johnson & Johnson this year, we’ve put together a new video about our history called Johnson & Johnson, Our History: Our Mission.  The video has many photographs, artifacts, documents and films from our archives that have never been seen before, and it tells the story of the founding and history of Johnson & Johnson and the ideas and philosophy that have been the backbone of the Company for 125 years. The story begins in Crystal Lake, Pennsylvania during the years of the American Civil War… Enjoy, and feel free to share the video wi

In 2011, Johnson & Johnson celebrated its 125th anniversary. When the Company began in 1886, the original 14 employees in our first building -- that small former wallpaper factory in New Brunswick, New Jersey -- could not have foreseen that 125 years later, their tiny little business would be a global company with approximately 117,000 employees at more than 250 operating companies in 60 countries. Those early employees were very creative in developing new manufacturing techniques to make the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings and sterile sutures, and that creativity has stayed

Sir Joseph Lister, from our archives This February marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of Sir Joseph Lister.  The father of modern antiseptic surgery, he was also the inspiration behind the founding of Johnson & Johnson.  It was Lister’s lecture at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition that led medicinal plaster maker Robert Wood Johnson and his brothers to start a company to make the first mass produced sterile surgical dressings and sterile sutures and actively promote the adoption of sterile surgery.  Today, non-sterile surgery would be unthinkable, but it wasn’t all that l

As regular readers of Kilmer House know, Johnson & Johnson has been making sterile sutures since the late 1880s. Until Johnson & Johnson became a global decentralized company, our operations were largely based in New Brunswick, N.J., the city in which we were founded, and we sold our products throughout the world through sales agents as part of a thriving export business.  However, during the Nineteen Teens, the disruptions caused by World War I made it harder for some areas of the world to import our products and those of other manufacturers.  (That was one of the things that led Gene

First Aid Kits are so central a part of modern life that it’s hard to imagine a time in which they didn’t exist.  But before Johnson & Johnson began making the first commercial first aid kits in 1888, people were on their own when it came to gathering and maintaining the right supplies to use in treating injuries and in knowing how to help someone in case of an injury.  A century and a quarter ago, that changed in a very social media-inspired way:  through a conversation. As this story from 1882 -- concerning our very own Fred Kilmer -- shows, when someone was injured before the era of fi