History
From rags to pads
The disposable pad is only about a hundred years old. Its story runs through wars, patents and a great deal of silence.
The pad in your bag looks like something that has always existed. In fact it’s surprisingly young. Our great-grandmothers managed in a completely different way – and almost nobody talked about it.
Cloth, needle and laundry
Before there were pads in shops, most women relied on homemade cloth pads.1 They used them, washed them and used them again. Among European and American settlers, the most common solution was washable rags.2
To keep the cloth in place, the sanitary belt appeared in the 19th century. According to historian Sharra Vostral, it wrapped between the legs and was connected to a waistband.2
The war that changed everything
During the First World War, an American company made bandages from a cellulose-based material. It was five times as absorbent as cotton bandages and much less expensive.1
Nurses at the front soon discovered the bandages were good for something else. An American charity received letters from army nurses saying they used the surgical dressings as makeshift sanitary pads.1
After the war the company had surplus material and turned it into a product. In October 1919, a department store in Chicago sold the first box of the new brand’s disposable pads.1
A product you weren’t supposed to mention
Buying pads, though, was awkward. Adverts promised the boxes came “in plain wrapper” – with nothing to give away what was inside. The maker even came up with a slogan telling women to simply “ask for them by name”, so they wouldn’t have to explain what they wanted to the shop clerk – often a man.1
The first marketing for pads wasn’t about how good they were. It was about how to buy them without anyone noticing.
The tampon and the cup
In November 1931, Earle Haas filed a patent for a “catamenial device” – a compressed strip of absorbent material with a thread and an applicator made of two paper tubes. The patent was granted in September 1933.3 Soon afterwards Haas sold it, and one of the first tampon brands was born.2
During the Second World War, when women took men’s places in factories, tampons became more acceptable because they let work go on without interruption.2
The menstrual cup is older than many people think, too. Actress Leona Chalmers filed a patent for a rubber cup in 1935 and was granted it in August 1937.4 Products worn inside the body, however, long met resistance because of fears about virginity.2
The inventor history held back
Mary Kenner, an African-American inventor, patented an adjustable sanitary belt with a moisture-proof pocket in 1957. According to Popular Science, she had designed it back in the 1920s, but racism delayed it reaching the market until the 1960s. By then, adhesive pads were starting to replace belts.2
The adhesive strip – and plastic
The first pads with an adhesive strip appeared in 1969 and quickly made belts obsolete.2 That brings us to the pad we know today.
A modern disposable pad usually has three main layers: a topsheet, often made of non-woven polypropylene or polyethylene fibres, an absorbent polymer core, and a backsheet that stops leaks.5 A person may use more than 10,000 menstrual products in a lifetime.5 In Europe and the United States, over 80% of them end up in landfill, where disposable pads may take 500 to 800 years to break down.6
The story isn’t over
Today there’s more choice than ever: disposable pads and tampons, but also reusable pads, menstrual cups and period underwear.7 Some of these “new” solutions are really old ideas coming back.
And the most important change in a hundred years isn’t the material. People talk more openly. If our great-grandmothers had to “ask by name” to avoid blushing, we can at least say the word out loud.
Sources
- Eschner K. The Surprising Origins of Kotex Pads. Smithsonian Magazine, 11 August 2017.
- Rainsford C. How WWI and WWII revolutionized period products. Popular Science, 6 October 2025.
- Haas EC. Catamenial device. US Patent US1926900, filed 19 November 1931, granted 12 September 1933.
- Chalmers LW. Catamenial appliance. US Patent US2089113, filed 11 July 1935, granted 3 August 1937.
- Upson K, Shearston JA, Kioumourtzoglou MA. Menstrual products as a source of environmental chemical exposure: a review from the epidemiologic perspective. Current Environmental Health Reports, 2022.
- Aujla M, Logie CH, Hardon A, Narasimhan M. Environmental impact of menstrual hygiene products. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2025;103(3):223–225.
- World Health Organization. Menstrual health – fact sheet, 18 June 2026.
