Leo Gerstenzang (June 3, 1892 – January 31, 1961) was a Polish-American inventor who, in 1923, created the first contemporary

cotton swab Cotton swabs (American English) or cotton buds (British English), also Q-tips ( proprietary eponym), are wads of cotton wrapped around a short rod made of wood, rolled paper, or plastic. They are most commonly used for ear cleaning, although th ...

or Q-Tips. His product, which he named "Baby Gays," went on to become one of the most widely sold brand names. There are many

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about how Gerstenzang came to create this invention. One is:

One day in 1923, Leo Gerstenzang found himself watching his wife, Ziuta, applying cotton wads to
toothpicks A toothpick is a small thin stick of wood, plastic, bamboo, metal, bone or other substance with at least one and sometimes two pointed ends to insert between Human tooth, teeth to remove detritus, usually after a meal. Toothpicks are also used ...
in an attempt to reach hard-to-clean areas. Gerstenzang, inspired, soon produced a one-piece cotton swab.

However, according to U.S.

Patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

Case (C-10,415) Q-Tips, Inc. v.

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, 108 F. Supp. 845 (D.N.J. 1952), it would appear that the first commercial producer of cotton tipped applicators was a Mrs. Hazel Tietjen Forbis, who manufactured them in her home. She also owned a patent on the article, numbered 1,652,108, dated December 6, 1927, and sold the product under the appellation Baby Nose-Gay. In 1925, The Leo Gerstenzang Co., Inc. purchased an assignment of the product patent from Mrs. Forbis. On January 2, 1937, Q-Tips, Inc's president, Mr. Leo Gerstenzang, and his wife Mrs. Ziuta Gerstenzang formed a partnership and purchased from Mrs Forbis "All merchandise, machinery and fixtures now contained in the premises 132 W. 36th Street and used by said Q-Tips, Inc., for the manufacture of Q-Tips or medicated swabs together with the accounts receivable of said Q-Tips, Inc." The contract recited that Q-Tips, Inc was the owner of patents covering the manufacture of applicators. Gerstenzang was born into a

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family in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

, then part of the

Congress Kingdom Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...

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. He immigrated to

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, Illinois, in 1912. From 1918 to 1919, he returned to Europe as a representative of the

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. In 1919, he was still living in Chicago, and became a naturalized US citizen there on September 29, 1919. By 1921, he had moved to

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. He founded a company, called the Leo Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Company, to market his new product. In 1926, he changed the name of the product from Baby Gays to Q-Tips Baby Gays, where "Q" stood for quality or Cutie Tips. Eventually the Baby Gays part was dropped and the product was called simply Q-Tips. The Leo Gerstenzang Science Library honors him at

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerstenzang, Leo 1892 births 1961 deaths Polish inventors Polish emigrants to the United States Naturalized citizens of the United States 20th-century American inventors