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Monday 13 November 2017

Scotch Tape

Scotch tape wasn’t invented by the Scottish. It was invented by a college dropout named Richard Drew from St  Paul, Minnesota who worked for a small sandpaper company founded in 1902 called Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, later known as 3M.


Drew joined 3M in 1920, and came up with the first masking tape two years later. It was intended to help auto-body painters detail cars without damaging existing paint jobs.

The first tape had adhesive along its edges but not in the middle. In its first trial run, it fell off the car and the frustrated bodyshop painter asked the inventor why he'd gone 'scotch' on the adhesive since it wasn't as sticky as normal tape. ("Scotch" used to mean "parsimonious".) The name was soon applied to the entire line of 3M tapes.

In 1925 Drew came up with the world's first transparent cellophane adhesive tape. Though intended for auto-body painters it didn’t take long for people to put the new tape to other imaginative uses.

Five years later Richard Drew invented Scotch® Cellulose Tape. Later to be renamed Cellophane Tape, it was marketed as an attractive, moisture-proof way for grocers and bakers to seal packages. It was first sold by 3M on January 31, 1930.

Antique Scotch brand package. By Improbcat 

In the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Americans discovered they could use Scotch Tape to make simple repairs to household items rather than replace them. This was the beginning of 3M’s diversification into all manner of marketplaces and helped them to flourish in spite of the Great Depression.

John A Borden, another 3M engineer, invented the first tape dispenser with a built-in cutter blade in 1932.

Tape dispenser for Scotch Magic Tape

Scotty McTape, a kilt-wearing cartoon boy, was Scotch Tape's mascot for two decades, first appearing in 1944. The familiar tartan design, a take on the well-known Wallace tartan, was introduced the following year.

Scientists have theorized for years on how to create graphene (the strongest material on earth). Two researchers won the 2010 Nobel Prize by simply using scotch tape to peel it off of graphite.

Unwinding a roll of Scotch tape inside a vacuum generates enough x-rays to image a human finger.

If you put a piece of scotch tape on an inflated balloon, then stick it with a small pin or needle, it won't pop.

Donald Trump scotch tapes the back of his tie to the front. When he was visiting Indianopolis as the president-elect in December 2016, a gust of wind blew back Trump's tie to reveal its back was stuck to the front thanks to two pieces of Scotch tape.

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