Harry Heltzer, 94, Inventor of Reflective Signs, Dies
NY Times
Harry Heltzer, who began at the 3M Company as a $12-a-week manual laborer, invented one of the company’s most profitable products and rose to be its top executive, died on Sept. 21 at his home in Lenoir, N.C. He was 94.
A granddaughter, Deborah Heltzer, confirmed the death.
Mr. Heltzer’s invention was a new way of making reflective signs for use on highways. It went on to become a market leader.
As head of 3M, a diversified technology and manufacturing company founded as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, Mr. Heltzer expanded the company to 150 countries, directly investing in new businesses abroad instead of just selling products.
From 1966 to 1972, years in which he was at the top of the company, earnings rose sharply. Nearly a third of that increase came after he rose from president to chairman and chief executive in October 1970.
Mr. Heltzer was fond of pointing out that none of 3M’s 30,000 products, the most famous of which is Scotch tape, generated more than 5 percent of its total revenue.
“It’s all nickel and dime stuff,” he said in a newspaper interview in the 1970’s. “But those nickels and dimes, they sure do add up.”
Mr. Heltzer was born in Cincinnati on Aug. 22, 1911, and moved to Minneapolis as a child. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in metallurgical engineering, then went to work for 3M as a laborer in its abrasives department.
His first job was unloading roofing granules from boxcars for 35 cents an hour. His wife, Elizabeth, told The Star Tribune of Minneapolis for its obituary article that he liked to say, “I asked for a job, and they gave me a job and a shovel.”
In 1937, he was assigned to a project to make the center striping on highways more reflective at night than was possible with the standard white or yellow paint. A Minnesota highway official had suggested painting glass beads onto the stripe.
The first problem Mr. Heltzer encountered was a lack of glass beads small enough to use. He proceeded to make his own, often through novel methods. One was to drop molten glass from his window.
He finally fashioned an acceptable double-coated tape with beads on one side, but he could not make it stick to the road during a Minnesota winter. So he used the process he developed to make a material for signs, which was sold as Scotchlite reflective sheeting.
Orange Traffic Cone
3M Scotchlite Reflective Striping Tape, 1 in x 50 ft - White Silver
