Kilmer House

Johnson & Johnson opened its first international operating company in Canada in 1919, followed by one in the United Kingdom in 1924.  Our decentralized global expansion continued, and today the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies is made up of more than 250 operating companies in 60 countries.  A Johnson & Johnson employee traveling around the world today would see a Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies presence across the globe.  But what if a Johnson & Johnson employee decided to go around the world back in 1908?  He or she would still see a Johnson & Johnson prese

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

One is a global health care company.  The other is the world’s most famous fictional detective, who has a very real museum dedicated to him at 221B Baker Street in London, his famous fictional residence.  So what does Sherlock Holmes have to do with the founding of Johnson & Johnson?  Well, Watson, if you haven’t already deduced the answer (one might even be tempted to say it’s elementary), read on to find out how they’re connected! Public domain illustration of Sherlock Holmes by Victorian illustrator Sidney Paget. Sherlock Holmes illustration courtesy of Wikimedia Commons at this link. B

Almost everyone has played the “Six Degrees of Separation” game at one time or another.  It’s a perfect example of how interconnected the world is…and how connected it is to the game’s inspiration and ultimate focal point, actor Kevin Bacon.  As a company that’s more than 125 years old, Johnson & Johnson has quite a few surprising connections of its own, so here’s Six Degrees of Separation…Johnson & Johnson style. Public Domain photo of Thomas Edison Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin -- via way of Wikimedia commons. 1.      Thomas Alva Edi

With this week being National Public Health Week and April being National Volunteer Month, it’s a perfect opportunity to go back in time and let an early Johnson & Johnson employee who was on the front lines of public health improvement talk about some of his volunteer efforts in that area.  How can we do that?  We don’t have a time machine (despite a Six Degrees of Separation connection to H. G. Wells!), but we do have a first-hand account from one of our employees who spent many years volunteering to improve public health, starting at a time when the field was in its infancy.  That emplo