Despite the name , Scotch tape was n’t invented by the Scottish . It was excogitate by a college dropout named Richard Drew from Minnesota who worked for a little sandpaper company founded in 1902 call off Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing , after screw as 3M. The name “ Scotch ” itself has an blood story almost as interesting as the innovation of Scotch tape .
give birth Richard Gurley Drew in St. Paul , Minnesota in 1899 , Drew spent a year at the University of Minnesota in the Mechanical Engineering program before drop out . He paid for that prison term at schooling and his correspondence schooltime course in machine purpose by playing banjo , and he include all of that information in his program to the open positioning of lab technician with 3M. He got the job and was set on the route to make chronicle .
In the 1920s , a two - tone paint job was popular for railroad car and a headache for automotive Felis concolor . The two - tone look was created by painting the car one color , applying a barrier of some sort to the paint helping , and then painting the next section . In ordering to get around the difficulty of this type of paint Book of Job , painters and automobile mechanic tested out unlike ways to achieve the look . Unfortunately , their attempts tended to be less than successful . Some self-propelling shops would paste newsprint over the already painted section while others used taping to prevent paint transfer . However those technique often left a sticky residuum on the blusher that was difficult to remove . Sometimes , it would even mean the painters had to do the entire blusher job over again .

One of Drew ’s responsibilities at 3 M was to deliver sample distribution of emery paper to local automotive shops for examination , where he often overheard workers who were paint complain about the problems with tapeline used for these key jobs . The twenty - three class old then lab helper got the idea to create a Modern tape that would produce a seal so that the pigment would n’t get through and yet also fare off neat without leave any unenviable residue that ruined the paint finish . Drew used the adhesive that 3 M utilize in the construction of its emery paper as a starting point . From there , it took him two years of experiment with dissimilar types of adhesives that he applied to a crepe paper funding to come up with the proper combining . Thus , what would be scream “ Scotch ” Masking Tape was behave in 1925 .
The success of the Scotch Brand Masking Tape allowed Drew to move up the ranks at 3M. In 1929 , his position as technical theatre director at the fabrication laboratory reserve him to quest after another idea . Cellophane had recently been invented by DuPont and was being used by grocers and bakers as a neat way to package their groceries . However , there was n’t a good way to seal the cellophane with tape measure because the dyed backing ruin the clear spirit . So Drew and his team of inventors worked to make a mag tape that used this clear cellophane as a backing .
regrettably , the machinery that 3 M used so as to apply the adhesive material to the cellophane financial backing tore the material , and the mucilage that work for the masking mag tape come out gold on the clear cellophane . The squad at last cook up new clear adhesive and modified machinery to handle the cellophane . The new tape recording was hollo Scotch Brand Cellulose Tape , but it appeared that it might have miss its opportunity with grocers and bakers despite call endorsements from several examination clients . You see , DuPont had introduced into the market a cellophane that could be seal with heat . even so , despite missing their original quarry grocery store and being released during the Great Depression , the Scotch Brand Cellulose Tape thrived with various domicile purpose .

So this all brings us back to how the term “ Scotch ” came to be associated with 3 M ’s Masking and Cellulose tapes . When Drew and 3 M begin allowing car mountain lion to test the new Scotch Brand Masking Tape , one painter purportedly complained about the lack of adhesive on the taping . One version of the storyclaims that the painter asked “ Why so Scotch with the adhesive?”Another translation states that the Felis concolor said“Take this back to your Scotch bosses and secern them to put more adhesive on it . ”
Whatever the sheath , in the 1920s , the term “ Scotch ” was a racial slang term that meant something or someone that was cheap or meagre . Based on the feedback , Drew hold more adhesive to the tape recording and in the end brand the tape with the dyslogistic “ stingy ” name of “ Scotch . ”
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This posthas been republished with permission fromTodayIFoundOut.com . Image byDanielunder Creative Commons licence .

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