Tape that went round the world

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33869, 14 June 1975, Page 12

Tape that went round the world

DAVID GUNSTON)

Women in America have taken to wearing strips of it on their foreheads whilst doing their housework, believing that it prevents them from frowning and so stops wrinkles forming.

This is just the latest of the 1000 or so known uses of the stuff, of which the world now uses many millions of miles every year. We are talking of transparent sticky cellulose tape. It has been around, incredibly for nearly 50 years. But we all take it so much for granted — accepting it as just another modern scientific aid to easier living — that we give no thought at al! to its origins. Laboratory work Worse still, we pay no tribute at all to its American inventor, Richard G. Drew; who, incidentally, had hardly any of its

present manifold uses in mind when he devised it. So here, for the record, is the cellulose tape story. It’s a tale of perseverance as well as of vision. In 1921. Drew, fresh from college, was a young dance-band banjoist. He had had some engineering training, and to his surprise was accepted from 15 applicants when he answered a newspaper advertisement inserted by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, of St Paul, who wanted a second research laboratory assistant.

The firm then made sandpaper, and one of Drew's first tasks was to try out experimental batches of new kinds in local motor re-sprays workshops. ‘I ly paper’ In those days, the twotone car was just coming in, and everyone wanted one, but the paint-sprayers had no really satisfactoryway of masking one half of each car as they sprayed the rest. They often made their own glue

and gummed paper and tapes with it.

None of these tricks really worked, and some adhesives tore away the paint when the masking strips were removed. Drew was impressed, and one day promised an irate paint-man that he would make him a better tape, and with the sublime confidence of youth set about to do just that.

"This looks like flypaper,” said the man when Drew turned up soon after with some wrapping paper strips coated with sticky vegetable oils. Together they tried it out on a big blue car. It worked well, but it still ripped off a. blister of paint when removed.

The young inventor went back to his drawing-board undeterred, spending six months trying linseed oil, naphthas, resins and chicle gum without much success. Finally he modified ordinary cabinet-maker’s glue, keeping it sticky with glycerin.

This mixture did the trick, but the next problem was how to keep the tape in a roll without it sticking to itself. Drew solved this

— or so he thought — by inserting butter-muslin between each layer.

Cumbersome roll

With a masking-tape 2in wide, this made a cumbersome roll, but it stuck well to the car bodies and peeled off satisfactorily after use.

At first, the company applied only a half-inch of adhesive to each edge of the tape, but when the workshop staff said: “Why be so Scotch with the glue?”, they coated the whole surface — and exploited the complaint by christening their product Scotch tape. Unfortunately, further snags were to hit them and their keen young inventor. The muslin lining proved too bothersome, and when the masked car-bodies were baked to set the cellulose enamel, the tape often melted. Plastic base After 18 months of fruitless work, the whole idea was shelved, and Drew went back to studying sandpaper.

But he did not forget his brainchild, and soon was testing out a new plastic base for the transparent tape — and a new glue. A few months later he found what he wanted. It was now 1928. One last snag remained to be ironed out. A way had to be found to roll up the tape into handy form without letting the glue stick to the reverse or uncoated side of the tape when it was rolled. Drew took two more years to solve this final problem. In 1930 he triumphantly produced a tape coated on one side with the sticky adhesive and on the other — with nothing. For, by using a special form of cellophane he had found that the glue stayed on one side and never came off on to the other. Since then, of course, the all-so-simple tape in one or other of its myriad forms, plain, coloured or fancy, has become part of life the world over. So next time you use some, spare a thought for Dick Drew, the nicest man ever to say, "It’s atickup.”