The photo is of one of my five rolls of Scotch tape. You never know when you might need it. I mostly use it for wrapping gifts. It does a great job of holding the paper securely and disappears into the design or solid color of the paper. I have also used the tape which is sticky on both sides. It is good for joining two things together when you don’t want the tape to be seen. Honestly, Scotch tape is such a ubiquitous part of every household, I can’t even remember or count all its uses. According to Perrie Samotin’s Nov. 10, 2014 article “12 Smart and Surprising Uses for Scotch Tape” at stylecaster.com, you can use it:
- To clean your keyboard.
- As a lint roller replacement.
- To keep a hem in place.
- To repair shoelaces.
- To pick up broken glass.
- To make a busted credit card work. Too much swiping can make the magnetic stripe on your
credit card start to dull. If you find yours isn’t working every time you use it, try covering the
stripe with a thin layer of Scotch tape until you get a new card.
In addition, there is masking tape — also good for a variety of uses. I do like it when I am painting; it really keeps edges of the paint crisp and clean. Scotch tape of any kind is really a genius invention. Let’s find out more about it.
According to Emily Matchar’s June 20, 2019 article “How the Invention of Scotch Tape Led to a Revolution in How Companies Managed Employees” in the Smithsonian Magazine, Richard Drew never wanted an office job. Yet the banjo-playing college dropout would go on to spend some four decades working at one of America’s largest multinationals and would invent one of the best-selling and most iconic household products in history.
That product is Scotch transparent tape, the tape that looks matte on the roll but turns invisible when you smooth it with your finger. Every year its manufacturer — 3M — sells enough of it to circle Earth 165 times.
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on June 22, 1899, Drew spent his youth playing banjo in dance halls, eventually earning enough money to attend the University of Minnesota. But he only lasted 18 months in the engineering program. He took a correspondence course in machine design and was soon hired as a lab tech by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, which was then in the business of manufacturing sandpaper.
Masking tape simplified the process of painting two-toned cars
Transparent tape was not Drew’s first ingenious invention. That was another household must-have — masking tape.
In Drew’s early days at the company, he would deliver sandpaper samples to auto manufacturers who used it for the painting process. In the 1920s, two-tone cars were trendy. Workers needed to mask off part of the car while they painted the other and often used glued-on newspaper or butcher paper for the job. But that was difficult to get off, and often resulted in a sticky mess. Drew walked into an auto body shop one day and heard the "choicest profanity I'd ever known" coming from frustrated workers. So, he promised a better solution.
He spent the next two years developing a tape that was sticky yet easy to remove. He experimented with everything from vegetable oil to natural tree gums. A company executive, William McKnight, told Drew to stop messing around and get back to his regular job, which he did, but Drew kept doing tape experiments on his own time.
Eventually, in 1925, he found a winning formula: crepe paper backed with cabinetmaker’s glue mixed with glycerin. But his first version of masking tape only had adhesive on the edges. When the painters used it, it fell off. They allegedly told Drew to take his “Scotch” tape back to the drawing board, using the term to mean “cheap,” a derogatory dig at stereotypical Scottish thriftiness. The name, so to speak, stuck. It would be used for the larger range of tapes from 3M (as the company would later be known). Drew received a patent for his masking tape in 1930.
That same year, Drew came out with his waterproof transparent tape after months of work. The tape took advantage of newly invented cellophane, but the material wasn’t easy to work with, often splitting or tearing in the machine. The adhesive was amber-colored, which ruined the cellophane’s transparency. Drew and his team went on to invent adhesive-coating machines and a new, colorless adhesive.
The tape was released just as America plunged into the Great Depression, a time when “mend and make do” became a motto for many. People used Scotch tape for everything from mending ripped clothing to capping milk bottles to fixing the shells of broken chicken eggs. At a time when many companies were going under, tape sales helped 3M grow into the multibillion-dollar business it is today.
William McKnight, the executive who told Drew to stop working on Scotch tape, eventually became chairman of 3M’s board. Through Drew, McKnight came to understand that letting researchers experiment freely could lead to innovation. He developed a policy known as the 15% rule, which allows engineers to spend 15% of their work hours on passion projects.
“Encourage experimental doodling,” McKnight said. “If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.”
The 15% rule has deeply influenced Silicon Valley culture; Google and Hewlett Packard are among the companies that give their employees free time to experiment. The Scotch tape story is now a classic business school lesson, a parable of the value of instinct and serendipity, which Drew once called, "the gift of finding something valuable in something not even sought out."
After his tape successes, Drew was tapped to lead a Products Fabrication Laboratory for 3M, where he was given free rein to develop new ideas. He and his team would file 30 patents for inventions from face masks to reflective sheeting for road signs. He would also become known as a great mentor, someone who helped young engineers hone their instincts and develop their ideas.
Drew retired from 3M in 1962 and died in 1980, at the age of 81. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
“Richard Drew embodied the essential spirit of the inventor, a person of vision and unrelenting persistence who refused to give in to adversity,” said 3M executive Larry Wendling at Drew’s induction.
Today, a plaque at the 3M Company in Drew’s hometown of Saint Paul commemorates his most famous invention. It reads, in part: “Introduced during the Great Depression, Scotch Transparent Tape quickly filled the need of Americans to prolong the life of items they could not afford to replace.”
According to the commemorative booklet produced by the National Historic Chemical Landmarks program of the American Chemical Society in 2007, as a result of Dick Drew’s tinkering — which was continued by those who followed in his footsteps — 3M developed a number of breakthrough adhesive products including 3M Micropore™ Surgical Tape®, Scotch® Pop-Up Tape Strips and Post-it® Notes. Yet despite his many successes, he never forgot how a bit of sandpaper changed his life.
"Would there have been any masking or cellophane tape if it hadn't been for earlier 3M research on adhesive binders for (waterproof) abrasive paper?" Drew once asked rhetorically. "Probably not."
Tape Dispenser
Soon after it was introduced in 1930, consumers discovered that Scotch® Cellulose Tape was — literally — almost indispensable.
While the tape itself worked great once it was applied, getting it off the roll wasn't easy. The end had to be picked loose with a fingernail or other sharp instrument. Once free, the tape didn't stay that way for long. Invariably, the loose end would curl back into place on the roll, become virtually invisible and hard to locate. Frequently, the tape tore before the desired length was cut. Even if users succeeded in getting the right amount of tape, it had to be cut off with scissors or torn haphazardly, a time-consuming and awkward task. As a result, tempers flared, and complaints rolled in.
Clearly the long-term success of this new product hinged on finding a better way to mete it out. But what? John Borden, a 3M sales manager, took on the task. In 1932, after 18 months of experimenting, he developed an efficient dispenser with a built-in cutter blade. The dispenser allowed the tape to be unwound, cut and applied in seconds. It even kept the end of the tape free for the next application. Although there would be changes over the years — including the introduction of the iconic snail-shaped tape dispenser in 1939 — the basic design has remained a standard.
Borden's dispenser became a key element in the growing market for cellophane tape. Without it, it's unlikely that Scotch® tape would have become truly indispensable in factories, homes and offices around the world.
Scotty McTape
According to Wikipedia Scotty McTape, a kilt-wearing cartoon boy, was the brand's mascot for two decades, first appearing in 1944. The familiar tartan design, a take on the well-known Wallace tartan, was introduced in 1945.
The Scotch brand, Scotch Tape and Magic Tape are registered trademarks of 3M. Besides using Scotch as a prefix in its brand names Scotchgard, Scotchlite and Scotch-Brite, the company also used the Scotch name for its mainly professional audiovisual magnetic tape products, until the early 1990s when the tapes were branded solely with the 3M logo. In 1996, 3M exited the magnetic tape business, selling its assets to Quantegy, which is a spin-off of Ampex.
Magic tape
Magic Tape also known as Magic Transparent Tape — is a brand within the Scotch tape family of adhesive tapes made by 3M, sold in distinctive plaid packaging.
Invented and introduced in 1961, it is the original matte finish tape. It appears frosty on the roll yet is invisible on paper. This quality makes it popular for gift-wrapping. Magic Tape can be written upon with pen, pencil or marker; comes in permanent and removable varieties; and resists drying out and yellowing.
In Japan, "Magic Tape" is a trademark of Kuraray for a hook-and-loop fastener system similar to Velcro. Instead, the katakana version of the word Mending Tape is used i.e., メンディングテープ, along with the familiar green and yellow tartan branding.
X-rays
In 1953, Soviet scientists showed that triboluminescence caused by peeling a roll of an unidentified Scotch brand tape in a vacuum can produce X-rays. In 2008, American scientists performed an experiment that showed the rays can be strong enough to leave an X-ray image of a finger on photographic paper.
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