Leo Gerstenzang

One is: One day in 1923, Leo Gerstenzang found himself watching his wife, Ziuta, applying cotton wads to toothpicks in an attempt to reach hard-to-clean areas. Gerstenzang, inspired, soon produced a one-piece cotton swab. However, according to U.S. Patent Case (C-10,415) Q-Tips, Inc. V. Johnson & Johnson, 108 F. 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. On January 2, 1937, Q-Tips, Inc's president, Mr. Leo Gerstenzang, and his wife Mrs. Gerstenzang was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw, then part of the Congress Kingdom of Poland. He immigrated to Chicago, Illinois, in 1912. From 1918 to 1919, he returned to Europe as a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In 1919, he was still living in Chicago, and became a naturalized US citizen there on September 29, 1919. 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 Brandeis University.

Leo Gerstenzang is recorded with the occupation entrepreneur. Recorded with the occupation inventor. Recorded with the occupation designer. Recorded as inventor, entrepreneur and designer.