ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY

SMALLER
The disposable dia
per and the meaning ofprogress.

BY MALCOLM GLADWELL

he best way to explore the mystery less than twenty seconds. The core can
T of the Huggies Ultratrim dispos-
able diaper is to unfold it and then cut it
hold three or more of those insults, with
a chance of leakage in the single digits.
in half, widthwise, across what is known The baby’s skin will remain almost per-
as the diaper’s chassis. At Kimberly- fectly dry, and that is critical, because
Clark’s Lakeview plant, in Neenah, prolonged contact between the baby and
Wisconsin,where virtually all the Hug- the insult (in particular, ammonium hy-
gies in the Midwest are made, there is droxide, a breakdown product of urine)
a quality-control specialist who does is what causes diaper rash. And all this
this all day long, culling diapers from will be accomplished by a throwaway
the production line, pinning them up garment measuring, in the newborn size,
against a lightboard, and carefully dis- just seven by thirteen inches. This is the
membering them with a pair of scissors. mystery of the modern disposable dia-
There is someone else who does a “vi- per: how does something so small do
sual cull,” randomly picking out Hug- so much?
gies and turning them over to check for
flaws. But a surface examination tells hirty-seven years ago, the Sili-
you little. A diaper is not like a computer
that makes satisfying burbling noises
T con Valley pioneer Gordon Moore
made a famous prediction. The number
from time to time, hinting at great inner of transistors that engineers could fit
complexity. It feels like papery under- onto a microchip, he said, would double
wear wrapped around a thin roll of Cot- every two years. It seemed like a fool-
tonelle. But peel away the soft fabric hardy claim: it was not clear that you
on the top side of the diaper, the liner, could keep making transistors smaller
which receives what those in the trade and smaller indefinitely. It also wasn’t
delicately refer to as the “insult.” You’ll clear that it would make sense to do so.
find a layer of what’s called polyfilm, Most of the time when we make things
which is thinner than a strip of Scotch smaller, after all, we pay a price. A smaller
tape. This layer is one of the reasons the car is cheaper and more fuel-efficient,
garment stays dry: it has pores that are and easier to park and maneuver, but it
large enough to let air flow in, so the di- will never be as safe as a larger car. In the
aper can breathe, but small enough to nineteen-fifties and sixties, the transistor
keep water from flowing out, so the di- radio was all the rage; it could fit inside
aper doesn’t leak. your pocket and run on a handful of bat-
Or run your hands along that liner. teries. But, because it was so small, the
It feels like cloth. In fact, the people at sound was terrible, and virtually all the
Kimberly-Clark make the liner out of a other mini-electronics turn out to be
special form of plastic, a polyresin. But similarly imperfect. Tiny cell phones are
they don’t melt the plastic into a sheet, hard to dial. Tiny televisions are hard to
as one would for a plastic bag. They spin watch. In making an object smaller, we
the resin into individual fibres, and then typically compromise its performance.
use the fibres to create a kind of micro- The remarkable thing about chips,
scopic funnel, channelling the insult to- though, was that there was no drawback:
ward the long, thick rectangular pad that if you could fit more and more transis-
runs down the center of the chassis,known tors onto a microchip, then instead of
as the absorbent core. A typical insult ar- using ten or twenty or a hundred mi-
rives at a rate of seven millilitres a sec- crochips for a task you could use just
ond, and might total seventy millilitres one. This meant, in turn, that you could
of fluid.The liner can clear that insult in fit microchips in all kinds of places (such
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 employees are dressed in dark-blue pants,
starched light-blue button-down shirts,
and tissue-paper caps.There are rows of
machines in the plant,each costing more
than fifteen million dollars—a dizzy-
ing combination of conveyor belts and
whirling gears and chutes stretching as
long as a city block and creating such a
din that everyone on the factory floor
wears headsets and communicates by
radio. Computers monitor a million data
points along the way, insuring that each
of those components is precisely cut and
attached according to principles and
processes and materials protected, on the
Huggies Ultratrim alone, by hundreds
of patents. At the end of the line, the
Huggies come gliding out of the ma-
chine,stacked upright, one after another
in an endless row, looking like exquis-
itely formed slices of white bread in a
toast rack. For years,because of Moore’s
Law, we have considered the microchip
the embodiment of the technological
age. But if the diaper is also a perfect
innovation,doesn’t it deserve a place be-
side the chip?

he modern disposable diaper was

T invented twice, first by Victor Mills
and then by Carlyle Harmon and Billy
Gene Harper. Mills worked for Procter &
Gamble, and he was a legend. Ivory
soap used to be made in an expensive
and time-consuming batch-by-batch
method. Mills figured out a simpler,
continuous process. Duncan Hines cake
mixes used to have a problem blend-
Diapers are like microchipsi,n that they got better as they got smaller. ing flour, sugar, and shortening in a con-
sistent mixture. Mills introduced the
as cellular phones and laptops) that you fifty per cent; in the mid-nineties they machines used for milling soap, which
couldn’t before, and, because you were shrank by a third or so; and in the next ground the ingredients much more
using one chip and not a hundred,com- few years they may shrink still more. It finely than before, and the result was
puter power could be had at a fraction of seems reasonable that there should have New, Improved Duncan Hines cake
the price, and because chips were now been a downside to this, just as there was mix. Ever wonder why Pringles, unlike
everywhere and in such demand they to the shrinking of cars and radios:how other potato chips, are all exactly the
became even cheaper to make—and so could you reduce the amount of padding same shape? Because they are made like
on and so on.Moore’s Law, as it came to in a diaper and not, in some way, com- soap: the potato is ground into a slurry,
be called, describes that rare case in promise its ability to handle an insult? then pressed,baked, and wrapped—and
which there is no trade-off between size Yet, as diapers got smaller, they got bet- that was Victor Mills’s idea, too.
and performance. Microchips are what ter, and that fact elevates the diaper In 1957, Procter & Gamble bought
might be termed a perfect innovation. above nearly all the thousands of other the Charmin Paper Company, of Green
In the past twenty years, diapers have products on the supermarket shelf. Bay, Wisconsin, and Mills was told to
got smaller and smaller, too. In the early Kimberly-Clark’s Lakeview plant is a think of new products for the paper
eighties, they were three times bulkier huge facility, just down the freeway from business. Since he was a grandfather—
than they are now, thicker and substan- Green Bay. Inside, it is as immaculate as and had always hated washing diapers—
tially wider in the crotch. But in the mid- a hospital operating room. The walls and he thought of a disposable diaper. “One
eighties Huggies and Procter & Gam- floors have been scrubbed white. The of the early researchers told me that
ble’s Pampers were reduced in bulk by stainless-steel machinery gleams. The among the first things they did was go
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 out to a toy store and buy one of those squirming and crawling and walking,
Betsy Wetsy-type dolls, where you put might place as much as five kilopascals of
water in the mouth and it comes out the pressure on the absorbent core of a dia-
other end,” Ed Rider, the head of the per. Diaper-makers tried to address this
archives department at Procter & Gam- shortcoming by moving from crêped tis-
ble, says. “They brought it back to the sue to what they called fluff, which was
lab, hooked up its legs on a treadmill to basically finely shredded cellulose.Then
make it walk, and tested diapers on it.” they began to compensate for paper’s
The end result was Pampers,which were failing by adding more and more of it,
launched in Peoria, in 1961. The diaper until diapers became huge. But they now
had a simple rectangular shape. Its liner, had Moore’s Law in reverse: in order to
which lay against the baby’s skin, was get better, they had to get bigger—and
made of rayon.The outside material was bigger still wasn’t very good.
plastic. In between were multiple layers Carlyle Harmon worked for John-
of crêped tissue.The diaper was attached son & Johnson and Billy Gene Harper
with pins and featured what was known worked for Dow Chemical, and they
as a Z fold, meaning that the edges of had a solution. In 1966, each filed sepa-
the inner side were pleated, to provide a rate but virtually identical patent appli-
better fit around the legs. cations, proposing that the best way to
In 1968, Kimberly-Clark brought solve the diaper puzzle was with a pecu-
out Kimbies, which took the rectangular liar polymer that came in the form of lit-
diaper and shaped it to more closely fit a tle pepperlike flakes and had the re-
baby’s body. In 1976, Procter & Gamble markable ability to absorb up to three
brought out Luvs,which elasticized the hundred times its weight in water.
leg openings to prevent leakage. But di- In the Dow patent, Harper and his
apers still adhered to the basic Millsian team described how they sprinkled two
notion of an absorbent core made out of grams of the superabsorbent polymer
paper—and that was a problem. When between two twenty-inch-square sheets
paper gets wet, the fluid soaks right of nylon broadcloth, and then quilted
through,which makes diaper rash worse. the nylon layers together. The make-
And if you put any kind of pressure on shift diaper was “thereafter put into use
paper—if you squeeze it, or sit on it—it in personal management of a baby of
will surrender some of the water it has approximately 6 months age.” After
absorbed,which creates further difficul- four hours, the diaper was removed. It
ties,because a baby,in the usual course of now weighed a hundred and twenty

“Excuse me, but it’s important to get those drinks

to those who need them the most.”
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grams, meaning the flakes had soaked ters, in a low, unassuming brick building.
up sixty times their weight in urine. “We still don’t understand perfectly how
Harper and Harmon argued that these polymers work,”Buchholz said on
it was quite unnecessary to solve the a recent fall afternoon. What we do
paper problem by stuffing the core of know, he said, is that superabsorbent
the diaper with thicker and thicker rolls polymers appear, on a microscopic level,
of shredded pulp. Just a handful of su- to be like a tightly bundled fisherman’s
perabsorbent polymer would do the job. net. In the presence of water, that net
Thus was the modern diaper born. Since doesn’t break apart into thousands of
the mid-eighties, Kimberly-Clark and pieces and dissolve, like sugar. Rather, it
Procter & Gamble have made diapers just unravels, the way a net would open
the Harper and Harmon way, pulling up if you shook it out, and as it does the
out paper and replacing it with super- water gets stuck in the webbing. That
absorbent polymer. The old, paper-filled ability to hold huge amounts of water,
diaper could hold, at most, two hundred he said, could make superabsorbent
and seventy-five millilitres of fluid, or a polymers useful in fire fighting or irri-
little more than a cup.Today,a diaper full gation, because slightly gelled water is
of superabsorbent polymer can handle more likely to stay where it’s needed.
as much as five hundred millilitres, al- There are superabsorbents mixed in with
most twice that.The chief characteristic the sealant on the walls of the Chunnel
of the Mills diaper was its simplicity: between England and France, so if water
the insult fell directly into the core .B u t leaks in the polymer will absorb the
the presence of the polymer has made water and plug the hole.
the diaper far more complex. It takes Right now, one of the major chal-
longer for the polymer than it does paper lenges facing diaper technology, Buch-
to fully absorb an insult, for instance. So holz said, is that urine is salty, and salt
another component was added, the ac- impairs the unravelling of the netting:
quisition layer, between the liner and the superabsorbents can handle only a tenth
core. The acquisition layer acts like blot- as much salt water as fresh water. “One
ting paper, holding the insult while the idea is to remove the salt from urine.
core slowly does its work, and distribut- M aybe you could have a puri f yi n g
ing the fluid over its full length. screen,” he said. If the molecular struc-
Diaper researchers sometimes per- ture of the superabsorbent were opti-
form what is called a re-wet test, where mized, he went on, its absorptive ca-
they pour a hundred millilitres of fluid pacity could increase by another five
onto the surface of a diaper and then hundred per cent. “Superabsorbents
apply a piece of filter paper to the diaper could go from absorbing three hundred
liner with five kilopascals of pressure— times their weight to absorbing fifteen
the average load a baby would apply to a hundred times their weight. We could
diaper during ordinary use. In a contem- have just one perfect particle of super-
porary superabsorbent diaper, like a absorbent in a diaper. If you are going to
Huggies or a Pampers, the filter paper dream,why not make the diaper as thin
will come away untouched after one in- as a pair of underwear?”
sult.After two insults, there might be 0.1 Buchholz was in his laboratory, and
millilitres of fluid on the paper. After he held up a small plastic cup filled with
three insults, the diaper will surrender, a few tablespoons of superabsorbent
at most, only two millilitres of mois- flakes,each not much larger than a grain
ture—which is to say that, with the aid of salt. “It’s just a granular material,to-
of superabsorbents, a pair of Huggies or tally nontoxic,” he said. “This is about
Pampers can effortlessly hold,even under two grams.” He walked over to the sink
pressure, a baby’s entire night’s work. and filled a large beaker with tap water,
The heir to the legacy of Billy Gene and poured the contents of the beaker
Harper at Dow Chemical is Fredric into the jar of superabsorbent. At first,
Buchholz,who works in Midland,Mich- nothing happened. The amounts were
igan, a small town two hours northwest so disproportionate that it looked as
of Detroit, where Dow has its head- if the water would simply engulf the
quarters. His laboratory is in the middle flakes.But,slowly and steadily, the water
of the sprawling chemical works, a mile began to thicken. “Look,” Buchholz
or two away from corporate headquar- said.“It’s becoming soupy.” Sure enough,
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 little beads of gel were forming. Nothing here, perhaps, is a partial explanation for
else was happening: there was no gas the great wave of corporate restructuring
given off, no burbling or sizzling as the that swept across America in the late
chemical process took place. The super- eighties and early nineties: firms could
absorbent polymer was simply swallow- downsize their workforce because they
ing up the water, and within minutes the had downsized their products.) And,be-
contents of the cup had thickened into cause using five plants to make diapers is
what looked like slightly lumpy, spongy more efficient than using eight,it became
pudding. Buchholz picked up the jar and possible to improve diapers without rais-
tilted it, to show that nothing at all was ing diaper prices—which is important,
coming out. He pushed and prodded the because the sheer number of diapers par-
mass with his finger. The water had dis- ents have to buy makes it a price-sensitive
appeared.To soak up that much liquid,the product. Until recently, diapers were fas-
Victor Mills diaper would have needed a tened with little pieces of tape, and if the
thick bundle of paper towelling. Buch- person changing the diapers got lotion or
holz had used a few tablespoons of su- powder on her fingers the tape wouldn’t
perabsorbent flakes. Superabsorbent was work. A hook-and-loop, Velcro-like fas-
not merely better; it was smaller. tener doesn’t have this problem. But it
was years before the hook-and-loop fas-
hy does it matter that the diaper tener was incorporated into the diaper
W got so small? It seems a trivial
thing, chiefly a matter of convenience to
chassis:until over-all manufacturing costs
were reduced, it was just too expensive.
the parent taking a bag of diapers home Most important, though, is how size
from the supermarket. But it turns out affects the way diapers are sold. The
that size matters a great deal. There’s shelves along the aisles of a supermarket
a reason that there are now “new, im- are divided into increments of four feet,
proved concentrated” versions of laundry and the space devoted to a given product
detergent, and that some cereals now category is almost always a multiple of
come in smaller boxes.Smallness is one of that.Diapers, for example, might be pre-
those changes that send ripples through sented as a twenty-foot set. But when di-
the whole economy. The old disposable apers were at their bulkiest the space
diapers,for example,created a transporta- reserved for them was never enough.“You
tion problem.Tractor-trailers are prohib- could only get a limited number on the
ited by law from weighing more than shelf,” says Sue Klug, the president of
eighty thousand pounds when loaded. Catalina Marketing Solutions and a for-
That’s why a truck carrying something mer executive for Albertson’s and Safe-
heavy and compact like bottled water or way.“Say you only had six bags.Someone
Campbell’s soup is “full,” when the truck comes in and buys a few, and then some-
itself is still half empty. But the diaper of one else comes in and buys a few more.
the eighties was what is known as a “high Now you’re out of stock until someone
cube” item. It was bulky and not very reworks the shelf, which in some super-
heavy, meaning that a diaper truck was markets might be a day or two.” Out-of-
full before it reached its weight limit. By stock rates are already a huge problem in
cutting the size of a diaper in half, com- the retail business. At any given time, only
panies could fit twice as many diapers on about ninety-two per cent of the products
a truck, and cut transportation expenses that a store is supposed to be carrying are
in half. They could also cut the amount of actually on the shelf—which,if you con-
warehouse space and labor they needed sider that the average supermarket has
in half. And companies could begin to re- thirty-five thousand items, works out to
think their manufacturing operations.
“Distribution costs used to force you
to have plants in lots of places,” Dudley
Lehman, who heads the Kimberly-Clark
diaper business, says. “As that becomes
less and less of an issue, you say, ‘Do I re-
ally need all my plants?’ In the United
States, it used to take eight. Now it takes
five.” (Kimberly-Clark didn’t close any
plants. But other manufacturers did, and
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 “Remembr,e s o n ,i t’s never too early to astrt saving for retirement.”

• •

twenty-eight hundred products that are pensive space in the whole chain.”Every-
simply not there. (For a highly efficient thing in the diaper world,from plant clos-
retailer like Wal-Mart, in-stock rates ings and trucking routes to product im-
might be as high as ninety-nine per cent; provements and consumer choice and
for a struggling firm,they might be in the convenience, turns, in the end,on the fact
low eighties.) But, for a fast-moving, that Harmon and Harper’s absorbent
bulky item like diapers,the problem of re- core was smaller than Victor Mills’s.
stocking was much worse. Supermarkets The shame of it,though, is that Har-
could have allocated more shelf space to mon and Harper have never been prop-
diapers,of course,but diapers aren’t a par- erly celebrated for their accomplishment.
ticularly profitable category for retailers— Victor Mills is the famous one.When he
profit margins are about half what they died, he was given a Timesobituary, in
are for the grocery department. So retail- which he was called “the father of dispos-
ers would much rather give more shelf able diapers.”When Carlyle Harmon died,
space to a growing and lucrative category seven months earlier, he got four hundred
like bottled water. “It’s all a trade-off,” words in Utah’s Deseret News, stressing
Klug says. “If you expand diapers four his contributions to the Mormon Church.
feet, you’ve got to give up four feet of We tend to credit those who create an
something else.” The only way diaper- idea, not those who perfect it, forgetting
makers could insure that their products that it is often only in the perfection of an
would actually be on the shelves was to idea that true progress occurs. Putting
make the products smaller, so they could sixty-four transistors on a chip allowed
fit twelve bags into the space of six. And people to dream of the future. Putting
if you can fit twelve bags on a shelf, you four million transistors on a chip actually
can introduce different kinds of diapers. gave them the future. The diaper is no
You can add pull-ups and premium different. The paper diaper changed par-
diapers and low-cost private-label diapers, enting. But a diaper that could hold four
all of which give parents more options. insults without leakage, keep a baby’s skin
“We cut the cost of trucking in half,” dry, clear an insult in twenty seconds flat,
says Ralph Drayer, who was in charge of and would nearly always be in stock,even
logistics for Procter & Gamble for many if you arrived at the supermarket at eight
years and now runs his own supply-chain o’clock in the evening—and that would
consultancy in Cincinnati. “We cut the keep getting better at all those things, year
cost of storage in half.We cut handling in in and year out—was another thing alto-
half,and we cut the cost of the store shelf gether. This was more than a good idea.
in half, which is probably the most ex- This was something like perfection. ♦
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