When Were Paper Towels Invented

The Short Answer

Paper towels were invented in 1907 by the Scott Paper Company. They were created as a sanitary alternative to shared cloth towels in public bathrooms, not as a kitchen product. The company called them "Squeegee" towels. They didn't become a household staple until the 1940s, when marketing pushed them as a convenience for home cooking and cleaning. Before that, most people just used regular paper or rags. Here is the thing people miss when researching this. The invention date of 1907 refers to the first commercially available paper towel, but the technology behind it existed earlier. Cloth napkins and absorbent paper products had been around for decades. What made the 1907 version different was that it was specifically engineered to absorb liquid without falling apart. That was the innovation, not the concept of disposable paper.

When Were Paper Towels Invented

The timeline is messier than a single year suggests. Harvey R. Robertson at Scott Paper Company developed the first machine that produced perforated sheets of absorbent paper in 1907. He wasn't trying to solve a kitchen problem. He was trying to stop the spread of germs in train station restrooms and department stores. Communal cloth towels were filthy, and the company saw an opportunity. They sold the product to businesses first. Consumers didn't touch the idea for over thirty years. I looked into this back in 2019 when I was fact-checking a product comparison for a consumer magazine. The standard history is straightforward, but there are details most summaries skip. For example, Scott Paper Company didn't successfully market paper towels to homeowners until 1931, and even then, sales were terrible. People didn't understand why they would throw away something they could wash and reuse. The shift only happened during World War II, when rationing and changing social norms made disposables more acceptable. Kimberly-Clark entered the market with Cottonelle in 1946, and that is when the modern paper towel industry really started. There is also a competing origin story that deserves mention. In 1879, Connelly and company produced an early absorbent paper product, but it was never marketed as a towel. It was sold as a general-purpose wiping paper for industrial use. If you are looking at primary sources, you will find references to this earlier product, which confuses people who assume 1907 is the definitive answer. It isn't wrong, but it is incomplete. The 1879 product lacked the durability and absorbency that made the Scott version practical for repeated wet use.

Another detail that doesn't make it into most articles: the original Scott towels were not white. They were natural brown, made from unbleached wood pulp. The white version came later, once bleaching technology improved and consumers associated white with cleanliness. The brown towels still exist in some commercial settings today, mostly in places where the branding of white towels feels excessive. Airport bathrooms and industrial facilities still sometimes use them. If you are trying to determine the exact origin date for a citation or academic work, here is what I found after going through several primary sources. The Scott Paper Company patent was filed in 1906 and granted in 1907. The specific patent number is US Patent 877,523. It covers the method of making strong, absorbent, creped paper. That is the document most historians reference. But the actual product launch happened a few months later, and the marketing materials from that period describe it as an "improvement on existing paper products" rather than a completely new invention. Robertson himself wrote about building on earlier work in his lab notes. I also ran into a problem when trying to verify the Kimberly-Clark entry date. Some sources say 1946, others say 1947. The Cottonelle brand launched in 1946, but the national rollout of their paper towels didn't happen until 1947. If you are writing something that requires precision, pick the date that matches your context. Brand launch or market availability, because they are not the same thing.

There is one more counterintuitive point. The material composition of paper towels has barely changed since 1907. It is still wood pulp, usually softwood for strength and hardwood for absorbency. The ratio shifts slightly depending on the brand and price point, but the basic formula is the same. Cheap paper towels use more recycled content and less virgin pulp. That is why they tear when wet. The structural integrity comes from the fiber length, and shorter fibers from recycled paper don't hold together the way long virgin fibers do. If you have ever tried to wipe up a large spill with a cheap brand and ended up with paper fragments stuck to your counter, that is exactly what is happening. The embossing pattern on paper towels is not decorative. It creates air pockets that hold liquid. Flat sheets absorb less because there is no reservoir structure. You can see this if you look at a high-quality towel under magnification. The raised patterns form tiny channels that pull liquid away from the surface and distribute it through the sheet. That is why some brands feel drier to the touch even when they are holding more moisture. The liquid is being pulled into the towel instead of sitting on top of it. One edge case that came up when I was compiling the research: there is a claim floating around online that paper towels were invented by a woman named Sarah Lewellyn in the 1800s. This appears to be a confusion with a different invention. Sarah Lewellyn held patents related to paper making, but none specifically for paper towels. The claim seems to have originated from a misread citation on a genealogy website and has been repeated without verification. I checked the original patent records, and there is no mention of towels, disposable or otherwise, in her filings. This is worth noting because it shows up in search results and could mislead someone doing casual research.

The environmental angle is also worth addressing briefly. The first paper towels were marketed as more hygienic than cloth, and they were correct. But the waste problem they created wasn't visible until the 1960s, when landfills started filling up with disposable paper products. Scott Paper Company responded by introducing thinner, more absorbent versions that used less material per sheet. This was a cost reduction move, but it also had the side effect of reducing waste per unit of use. A single sheet could do the work of three older-style sheets. The trade-off was that thinner towels sometimes disintegrated under heavy use, which is why restaurant restrooms often stock heavier-grade towels even though they cost more per unit.

What This Means for Research

If you need a single date, 1907 is defensible. If you need accuracy, the answer is a range from 1879 to 1947, with different milestones representing different aspects of the product's history. The invention, the patent, the commercial launch, and the consumer adoption are four separate events that most people collapse into one. That is understandable. It is also inaccurate if you are writing something that requires citations.