Abena Ar cle: The Development of the Nappy. The development of the ‘nappy’ as we know it has evolved over a long period of me. In days gone by all sorts of cloth, animal skins and vegeta on were used! The Inuit people used moss placed under sealskin and in some June Rogers MBE, Team Director Na ve American PromoCon tribes, mothers packed grass under a cover made of rabbit skin, as was also done by the Incas in South pioneering days, wet nappy cloths were seldom washed - most of the me they just hung by the fireplace to dry and were then used again and in Elizabethan mes, babies were apparently only treated to a clean nappy cloth every few days - as you can imagine the smell must have been awful. Also skin breakdown was a serious problem in those days and even as late as the1970’s I can remember caring for toddlers with nappy rash so severe that they were hospitalised. By the nineteenth century toilet ‘training’ was begun in earnest in the earliest months of life and in the late 1800's infants in Europe and North America were wearing the forerunner of the modern nappy or ‘diaper’. A square or rectangle of linen, co#on flannel, or stockinet was folded into a rectangular shape and held in place with safety pins. "Diaper" was originally the term for an overall pa#ern of small repeated geometric shapes, and then a white co#on or linen fabric with such a pa#ern. So the first babies' diapers were made from diaper fabric, meaning fabric with a repe ve pa#ern. The first mass produced cloth diapers were introduced by Maria Allen in 1887 in the United States. However the main problem with the cloth nappies was that they were not waterproof so in 1946 an American housewife, Marion Donovan, set about designing a waterproof version that could not only reduce leakage but also be mass produced. They were originally
fashioned from cut up shower curtains and the result was the “Boater” which was a waterproof cover with snaps for a cloth diaper or disposable insert. Her a#empts at developing an absorbent disposable insert were not so successful, nevertheless she went on to patent and mass produce the ‘Boater’ in 1951 later selling the company for over US$1 million. In 1949 a Bri sh mother, Valerie Hunter-Gordon, developed a two-piece disposable nappy for her own baby and sold more than 400 to local women. Two years later, Robinson & Sons commercialised a twopiece ‘Paddi Pad’ diaper based on this concept (the ubiquitous inco roll!). Ten years later, Vic Mills of Procter & Gamble, picked up on Donovan’s first unpatented disposable paper design (said to have occurred while he was changing his grandchild’s par cularly dirty nappy!!) and developed the first fully-disposable nappy. This improved design was patented and first launched in 1961. However the first disposable nappies were s ll rectangular and very bulky between the infants’ legs resul ng in comments from Pediatricians regarding its poten al effect on the babies’ developing bones. The shape of the diaper changed for a be#er fit, from the old “rectangular shape” to a more modern “hourglass shape”. In 1975, the hourglass shaped “Luvs” was first introduced in the US market and in 1976 Kimberly Clark introduced its shaped ‘Huggies’ nappies. Lateral elastomerics were used at the end of the decade by most producers in an a#empt to improve the fit. From then on the disposable nappy has gone on to be improved further with the addi on of ‘super absorbent’ (SAP) in the early 1980’s which enabled the nappy to be thinner and also reduced the risk of leakage and nappy rash.