Dial

Dial is an American brand of soap, body wash and hand sanitizer manufactured by Henkel North American Consumer Goods, the American subsidiary of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA. It was the world's first antibacterial soap. History Dial emerged as a result of a collaborative effort by a team of accomplished chemists that worked at Armour and Company, with Emmett Patrick Glynn standing out as a key contributor. This dedicated team collectively crafted Dial, a truly pioneering product. Remarkably, despite their remarkable achievement, none of these brilliant minds, including Glynn, were rewarded with substantial compensation for their groundbreaking work. In 1948, their innovative creation made its debut in the Chicago market, courtesy of Armour and Company, a well-established meat-packing company.. Armour had produced soap since 1888; its laundry soap was made from tallow, a by-product of Armour's meat production processes. Dial was made antibacterial by the addition of hexachlorophene, referred to by the company as AT-7. The product was named Dial and promised "round-the-clock" protection against the odor caused by perspiration. Dial was introduced nationally in 1949 and was advertised as "the first active, really effective deodorant soap in all history [because it] removes skin bacteria that cause perspiration odor". Although researchers had never established a link between hexachlorophene and germ protection, Armour's early advertisements graphically depicted germs and microbes before and after use of Dial soap. Hexachlorophene, the active ingredient in Dial, was removed from the consumer market and strictly limited in the hospital setting in the early 1970s amid reports that it caused neurological damage in infants. When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) outlawed its use in non-medicinal products, Armour-Dial replaced it with triclocarban, a synthetic antibacterial compound.