00:00 In 1958, Sarah Little Turnbull pitched a presentation to 3M about why they should go into the non-woven business, which eventually led to the development of the N95 mask.

04:45 The N95 mask is effective at blocking out tiny microscopic particles and providing real protection to healthcare workers, and its development is the result of hundreds of years of trial and error in different cultures and diseases.

09:33 During the bubonic plague, doctors wore beaked masks filled with incense to protect themselves from the disease, and in the early 20th century, an outbreak of plague in Manchuria led to a scientific arms race between China and Russia to find a solution.

13:43 The Chinese Imperial Court brings in a young doctor named Wu Lintai who proposes a radical alternative diagnosis for the plague outbreak in Manchuria, and after a French doctor dies from the disease, everyone agrees with Wu's diagnosis.

18:25 Dr. Wu's design for a cotton mask that fit tightly around the face and prevented the spread of pathogens became widely used in Manchuria and eventually influenced the design of the N95 respirator.

23:07 Sarah Little Turnbull, an urban space designer and friend of Paula Reese, was a woman who had been creating products since the 1940s and was an example of what was possible, and she ended up in a boardroom at 3M, reaching an idea that would pave the way for the N95 mask.

27:59 Sarah Turnbull, an urban space designer and friend of Paula Reese, incorporated the world into her work, looking for connections between seemingly different things, and after noticing that manufacturers were not considering the needs of housewives in their product design, she wrote an article calling them out, leading to her being hired by 3M and eventually coming up with the idea to use the molded bra cup design to create a better mask.

32:55 3M agreed to Sarah's proposal to design better medical masks, and by 1961 they patented their first lightweight medical mask based on Sarah's design, although it didn't effectively block pathogens, leading to the development of the N95 mask in 1995.

37:35 The demand for N95 masks has skyrocketed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the supply cannot keep up, as the masks require years of research and development to ensure proper filtration and fit.