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They travel daily from room to room, home to work, office to office, across the country and around the globe - millions of them - silent messengers delivering family news, directives from upstairs, and reminders of the endless minutia in an increasingly complex world.

They're Post-it® notes: that deceptively simple tool no one knew they needed until everybody realized they were essential - and in mass quantities. Created in the late '70s by scientist Art Fry with the 3M Company, Post-it® notes are now made in all varieties of shapes, sizes, and even scents, and have become one of the premier pop-culture icons of the late 20th century.

"People definitely know Post-it® notes exist," laughs Chris Holmes, 3M's plant manager. "It's hard to imagine life without them."

And they are all made in Kentucky, in the northeastern part of the state, in Cynthiana - population 6,497.

"Post-it® notes took off because they met an unarticulated need," says Holmes. "People needed it, but didn't know it at the time. They know it now."

Millions of the self-stick notes are manufactured each year and sold worldwide. They are one of the top five selling office supply products in the United States and are brisk sellers in Japan and Europe. Holmes says the exact quantity of Post-it® notes made annually is a trade secret - publishing that figure would be a competitive threat to 3M. He just says the Cynthiana plant churns out "an enormous quantity."

Available in 27 sizes, 56 standard shapes, and 22 different dispensers, Post-it® notes offer nearly unlimited imprint potential. Their 57 color possibilities include the signature sunshine yellow as well as neons, pastels, and ultrabrights. New Post-it® products include a safari series made of recycled paper fiber and a dispenser memo cube printed with colorful designs like exotic tropical fish, floral arrangements, and forest scenes.

"The type of Post-it® note you choose says something about you," says Holmes. "They're an extension of an individual personality. They even come in retrobright colors like purple and orange. At the time we thought, 'Who would ever choose a color like that?' But people do. It's a fashion thing."

There are even 20 different fragrances encapsulated into the adhesive coating of Post-it® notes - including dill pickle, pizza, bubble gum, natural gas, and chocolate scents - creating aromatic possibilities for all varieties of messages. The odoriferous Post-it® notes are a small part of the promotional line-up of Post-it® products.

"The standard line is one side of the business," says Holmes. "The other side is the promotional market for people who are trying to sell something. If they're making a chocolate product, they may want a chocolate-smelling Post-it®. You might see Post-its® in the shape of a truck for a trucking company. People also use them with the imprint 'from the desk of...' There are lots of options for customization."

According to Holmes, Post-it® notes comprise a combination of patented trade secrets, including a precision coat of a micro-sphere adhesive. As Holmes describes it, the coating has little bubbles of adhesive in it. When the adhesive is broken under pressure, stickiness results - the kind of stickiness that adheres cleanly to all kinds of surfaces from file folders to desktops, computers to kitchen counters. While the Post-it® note can be repositioned many times, it is designed to remain stuck in place until the user removes it.

The Post-it® note is such a familiar part of daily life these days that it's often in scenes and story lines of TV shows like Seinfeld and cartoon strips like Cathy, Dilbert, and The Wizard of Id, as well as bestselling books. In Longshot, a mystery by Dick Francis, a survival expert packs Post-it® notes for map-making and trail-marking. Author Tom Clancy positioned Post-it® notes into Debt of Honor as a document marker for high-level signatures.

They played a leading role in the 1997 movie Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. When two 20-something airheads return to their hometown, they decide to pass themselves off as savvy business-women who hit success with an amazing invention.

"I think it should be like something that everybody has heard about but nobody really knows who invented it," Romy brain-storms in the movie. "I've got it! Post-its®. Everybody knows what Post-its® are."

"I love any movie that mentions 3M," laughs Holmes, who recalls that the producers of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion asked permission to mention product and followed their request up with a copy of the script.

While Post-it® notes enjoy an ever-growing presence in the limelight, their makers maintain a low profile about the product. Proprietary technology remains just that. Trade secrets are jealously guarded. Plant tours are discouraged.

"We simply don't show people our processes," says Holmes.

Patents, like trade secrets, fall under the proprietary category - they're strictly on a need-to-know basis. While Holmes admits that some of the Post-it® note patents have expired, he is quick to point out that 3M has an undisclosed game plan in place.

"We're still okay," he says. "We continue to develop the product and have new patents."

Despite the serious nature of patents and trade secrets, Holmes is the first to remark on the lighthearted spirit of Post-it® products.

"The product we have is interesting and we have fun making it. Post-it® notes are functional and appealing and not offensive to anybody. Even when you just walk into a store, you want to grab them."

Power for Post-its®

Clocking roughly 4 million kilowatt-hours a month (the average home uses about 908), the 3M Company in Cynthiana is the largest single business served by Harrison Rural Electric Cooperative. The plant is such a substantial electricity user that it is on its own substation.

Larry Jones, member services director of the Harrison electric co-op in Cynthiana, says that the operations department makes weekly inspections of the line that powers the plant to make sure that everything is in running order or to catch potential problems before they can slow production. The co-op maintains two lines to the plant as an extra precaution.

"We haven't had any major glitches in service," says Jones. "The plant can't afford an outage with their business - it would really cause them a lot of problems." Chris Holmes agrees that the coop's service has been good. He says, "The co-op works to keep up with the increasing demand and provide a consistent and clean power supply that is the lifeblood of 3M's state-of-the-art manufacturing facility."

Post-its® are everywhere

Now considered a standard fixture in the home and officescape, the Post-it® note actually began as a laboratory failure. When Art Fry invented the Post-it® note nearly 20 years ago, no one could see the need for a self-stick note-that is, until they used one. That was the challenge for Fry and 3M's marketing team: to get people to try them just once. They started giving away free samples-a novel idea at the time-passing out Post-its® in banks and offices. Soon, orders began pouring in.

The smallest Post-it® note measures .5 inches by 2 inches; the largest Post-it® product is the Post-it® Easel Pad, which spans 25 by 30.5 inches of jottable, sketchable space.

3M produces more than 400 different Post-it® products, including custom-printed Post-it® notes (featuring sports franchises, company logos, and characters from the entertainment industry, among others), the Post-it® Memoboard, Post-it® Tape Flags, Post-it® note dispensers like the Pop 'n jot that can be clipped to a car's dashboard or sun visor, and handy compact Post-it® note dispensers that can be tucked into pockets and purses.

The company has kept pace with computer technology with the introduction of their Post-it® Software Notes for Internet Designers, a digital version of the familiar yellow note. The software is the first product of its kind to allow Web content to live outside the browser. Notes can be equipped with alarms and can be sent as electronic mail.

AN ENGLISHMAN IN KENTUCKY

The 3M Company began operations in 1969 in Cynthiana, manufacturing hard goods like copiers and overhead projectors. It was a business, according to plant manager Chris Holmes, that did not go so well. The facility was a good one, however, and was put to use manufacturing Post-it® notes in the early '80s.

When you think of all the Post-it® notes being made in Kentucky, it's a great tribute to the people of Cynthiana," says Holmes. "It's a good facility with good people. It's the focal point of Post-its®."

Holmes became 3M's Cynthiana plant manager last February. The year before he had worked in Post-it® notes. Originally from Sheffield, England, Holmes arrived in Cynthiana during the flood of '97, after a stint in Canada where he worked for 3M making abrasives.

"It could have been a culture shock, coming to Kentucky from England, without that stop in Canada," says Holmes. "England is a very different environment from North America."

"The people in Kentucky are very friendly, very involved. I don't know if that is unique to the 3M plant or to Kentuckians in general. The people really care a lot about doing the right thing and doing it well."