We almost take these for granted.
It's the simple -- some might even suggest -- humble tissue that is nearly weightless and meant to be thrown away.
A century ago, it was a very different kind of wonder material.
This week, our series, War of Invention.
We're looking at the products that are only here today
because they were invented, they were conceived, they were created, they were manufactured, their life began in World War I.
Back then, this was a material that could help save lives on the battlefield.
Paula Newton has the story of the ordinary household product -- the Kleenex -- that did extraordinary things.
Sheet by sheet, box by box, year by year, a global brand a century in the making.
The Germans started using gas in 1915.
It was a new threat on the front lines of Europe -- poison gas.
Governments on both sides raced to find a way of protecting the troops.
They came up with the idea of developing a sanitary tissue of some kind and they did this over the course of summer 1914.
They called it cellu-cotton.
"They" was Kimberly-Clark, at the time a paper company headquartered in Wisconsin.
As the war broke out, they were trying to diversify.
Cellu-cotton came just in time.
The gas mask filter material that Kimberly-Clark developed ended up being specifically geared towards gas -- the Germans called this G76 --
that was intended to make people vomit inside their gas masks.
And this material that Kimberly-Clark then developed was specifically designed to prevent that from entering the gas mask.
The war gave Kimberly-Clark a new product and purpose.
But, when the war ends...
Kimberly-Clark sat on virtual carloads of this cellu-cotton stuff.
They were trying to figure out what to do with it.
Kleenex started off as a makeup remover in 1923.
Kimberly-Clark played into the hands of a newly health-conscious post-war generation.
Kleenex was marketed as skin-friendly, even celebrity-friendly.
By the late 1920s, though, it was clear the market was heading in a new direction.
They figured out that most people didn't use Kleenex to remove makeup.
There were a lot more people that used it as a disposable handkerchief.
And, so, at last in 1929, the first ever box of Kleenex facial tissues.
Within really a matter of six months, they redeployed the entire marketing campaign.
Really, this was the product that carried Kimberly-Clark through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
It's a very reliable profit-maker for the organization.
From one box to a billion-dollar business.
Our facility is about 33 acres under roof here.
We produce close to a million cartons of Kleenex a day out of here.
This mill in Connecticut is just one of 21 Kleenex sites worldwide.
From when the pulp comes into the facility to when it can go out on a truck as a finished product would take about 45 minutes.
You know, you don't have to buy Kleenex. People need to want to have it in their home.
The marketing machine that began in the 1920s is still going strong, as Kleenex faces more and more competition.
I think the marketing genius really of Kimberly-Clark was that they were the prime movers.
They were the first ones to introduce these products.
That made it possible for them to introduce their brand name as a generic name into the American consumer vocabulary.
A small piece of everyday life written into language and into history.