Kilmer House

There’s a little-known legend surrounding the Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters site in New Brunswick.  The legend concerns the fact that when one of the old buildings was removed some years ago, a tunnel leading to the Raritan River was discovered.  There has been a lot of speculation about the purpose of that tunnel.  Was it an old, abandoned mine tunnel from before the days of Johnson & Johnson?  Did it have something to do with the Revolutionary War?  Or – an even more intriguing possibility -- could it have been a part of the Underground Railroad,* which had several stops in Ne

Throughout its history, Johnson & Johnson has been known for developing and making products in response to needs in society…such as the first commercially available sterile surgical dressings.  Occasionally, though, the Company produced a product that helped fill a more unusual need in society.  One early product filled not a health care need, but a fashion craze.  And that product was…Beauty Spots.     Beauty Spots were small pieces of material – usually black silk or sometimes velvet – with adhesive on the back.  They were most commonly shaped lik

A Peek Inside One of Our Offices in the Mid-1940s 1. The Company started on the fourth floor of an old wallpaper factory. 2. In the Nineteen-teens, before air conditioning, Johnson & Johnson had a swimming pool for employees – at work! -- so they could cool off in the summer heat. 3. When he was younger, Robert Wood Johnson the first was known to wear a stovepipe hat.  (We don’t have a picture of him wearing the hat in our archives, unfortunately.) 4. Barry Manilow wrote the “I Am Stuck on BAND-AID® Brand…” jingle. 5. John Travolta, Terri Garr and Brooke Shie

James Wood Johnson Most people, unless they read this blog, have probably never heard of James Wood Johnson, one of the three brothers who founded Johnson & Johnson in 1886.  But more than a billion people around the world are familiar with his handwriting.  Why?  Because the Johnson & Johnson logo is based on it.  James Wood Johnson's signature Johnson & Johnson logo circa 1920s, from our archives.  This familiar logo has been a part of Johnson & Johnson since the beginning.  It’s not a typeface, but is based on handwriting…one particular person’s handwriting.  You can see the

Frederick Barnett Kilmer Fred Kilmer, the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer from 1889 to 1934, took his role as a scientist, writer, guardian of public health and educator of the public very seriously.  But he was not against ever so subtly lightening things up a little bit every now and then.  Here’s an example from a 1914 issue of THE RED CROSS MESSENGER.  Sandwiched between articles on the importance of First Aid, advice for druggists on how to effectively decorate drugstore windows to increase their business, and the proper use of Synol Soap, the Company’s antibacterial so

Thomas Alva Edison invented and perfected many of the things that shaped modern life, such as the phonograph, an improved stock ticker, carbon microphone and commercially practical electric lighting.  But what was his connection to the early days of Johnson & Johnson?  Fred Kilmer's Opera House Pharmacy Edison’s connection to the Company was through a personal relationship.  Thomas Edison was friendly with Frederick Barnett Kilmer, the Company’s scientific director.   Fred Kilmer Before joining Johnson & Johnson, Kilmer ran the Opera House Pharmacy in downtown New

Strange But True:  The Baby Powder that Helped Launch a Rocket 1. JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder was used by NASA to help insure the successful launch of the Apollo 8 spacecraft in 1968.  The rocket had a rubber strip holding together a covering that protected a measuring instrument.  NASA needed a means to insure that the rubber strip could slide off freely during the rocket’s launch.  A NASA engineer used some JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder that he brought in from home.  It did the job so well that he planned to use it on all subsequent Apollo launches.  [The Bulletin, Th