A Xerox is any copying machine, aspirin is any acetylsalicylic acid, a jeep is any SUV. No matter how the companies that invented these products try to convince the public that these are trademarks. Among such brands, which over time have become generic concepts to designate a group of goods with homogeneous consumer properties, is Scotch. For more than 70 years, the 3M company has been trying to convince the world that only it produces products under this brand. However, all these 70 years, millions of people are still convinced that tape is any transparent adhesive tape.
In 1902, a mediocre businessman from Minnesota, Edgar Ober, heard that in the vicinity of the town of Two Harbors there was corundum, a mineral second in strength only to diamond and an ideal raw material for the production of sandpaper. And soon, together with four partners, Ober founded the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company, known today as 3M. The companions cheerfully got down to business, but it soon became clear that the mineral they were going to mine was not corundum, but a low-grade variety of anorthosite. By making sandpaper based on it, the company would quickly go bankrupt. And therefore, having closed the mine, Ober and his comrades moved to Dilut, where he began producing abrasives from corundum mined by other companies. But businessmen didn’t like it here either, and in 1910 Minnesota Mining moved to St. Paul (where 3M’s headquarters are still located today).
Along with Minnesota Mining, 23-year-old William McKnight, a business college graduate who was hired by the company in 1907 as a junior accountant, also moved from Diluth to St. Paul. He quickly moved up the career ladder and already in 1914 took the post of manager. Under his leadership, Minnesota Mining quickly gained momentum and on August 11, 1916, speaking at the next meeting of shareholders, Edgar Ober said: “Gentlemen, we have all been waiting for this day to come, doubting whether it would come at all. Today we are finally debt free. The future looks exciting. Our business has doubled in the last two years and for the first time we have money left over to pay a dividend of 6 cents per share.”
New luck (or rather, even two) was brought in 1921: Minnesota Mining acquired from one of its competitors an exclusive license to produce a unique sandpaper that was absolutely resistant to moisture, called Wetordry. Its use allowed car factories and repair shops to introduce wet grinding technology, dramatically reduce the volume of dust emissions and thereby reduce the number of pulmonary diseases among workers. The new product did not go unnoticed - the demand for Minnesota Mining products doubled. That same year, the company hired one Richard Drew, who had previously made his living playing banjo in a band that performed on the dance floors of St. Paul.
In his youth, Dick Drew dreamed of becoming a mechanic and even built a miniature railroad in the yard of his house. But this socially useless achievement did not contribute to his success in studying mechanics - when Dick was 20 years old, he was expelled in disgrace from the University of Minnesota, where he studied for only a year. Then the young researcher entered the International Correspondence College. One day, while returning home from the dance floor, he noticed a Minnesota Mining job advertisement. The company urgently needed laboratory assistants to study complaints and wishes of consumers of its products. Returning home, Dick wrote a resume on college letterhead (not even concealing the fact that he had been expelled from the university) and sent it to the company's human resources department. A few weeks later, 21-year-old Richard Drew was hired - he was tasked with studying reviews of sandpaper supplied to surrounding auto repair shops.
Two years have passed. Little had changed in Dick's life - he was still a laboratory assistant. And then one day, while testing Wetordry in one of the car services, he heard a five-story mat behind him. Luckily, it wasn't the sandpaper that caused it—it was just a painter tinkering around the brand new Packard that ruined the car's paint. Here's the thing. At that time, two-tone paint came into fashion. And while the painter was applying one paint, the other, already applied, had to be covered with something. For this, old newspapers were used, which were held together with office glue, or a medical plaster on a fabric basis. But this did not help - the fabric let the paint through, and the paper coated with glue stuck to the body, and had to be scraped off along with the paint.
Dick suddenly really wanted to retrain from mechanics to chemists. He reported the problem to the company's management and volunteered to solve it, although he had no idea how this could be done. And yet, he managed to convince his superiors of the feasibility of such research. And under his own command. Dick was given funds for experiments and even assistants. It took Drew and his team nearly three years to create a waterproof tape that would adhere smoothly and securely to the body without damaging the paint when removed. Their first product was paper tape, on which, in order to save money, it was decided to apply glue only along the edges. For this, buyers nicknamed her “Scotch” (in English - scotch), which in America means “stingy, thrifty”. When a more advanced adhesive paper tape appeared in 1925, the company (by the way, adding glue) called it Scotch. Samples of this tape were sent to automakers in Detroit. Soon after, three trucks arrived from the automobile capital of America to pick her up. This is how the now world famous Scotch brand appeared. All Dick Drew had to do was come up with a product that came to be called “scotch” - a transparent adhesive tape on a polymer base.
Dick Drew began developing a new type of adhesive tape in 1929, after the Du Pont company first introduced samples of a new transparent pulp material called cellophane. This waterproof film immediately fell in love with food manufacturers, and one of them asked the 3M company to invent a waterproof tape for sealing cellophane packaging for meat, candy, and bread. It took Dick Drew only a year to solve this problem.
The glue applied to the cellophane was supposed to ensure a tight fit of the tape to the reel, without leaving adhesive marks on the subsequent layer. At the same time, the tape had to be securely attached to the surface that was to be sealed. Drew later said that he was a cook, not a chemist: in search of the perfect glue, he tried everything - from vegetable oil to glycerin. He eventually settled on a colorless mixture of resin and rubber. It was good for everyone, except for one thing: it was impossible to distribute it evenly over the cellophane base - the cellophane curled, split or tore. At the end of each working day, a truck drove up to Dick's laboratory to pick up piles of cellophane damaged during the experiments. But Dick solved this problem too. He came up with the following idea: before applying glue to the cellophane, cover it with a thin layer of primer.
On September 8, 1930, Minnesota Mining sent a pilot batch of the new tape to Shellmar Products Corporation of Chicago, which produced cellophane packaging for confectionery products. Three weeks later, the answer came from there: “You shouldn’t skimp on the costs of launching this product into production and promoting it to the market. It is obvious that the company will be able to achieve sufficient sales volumes.”
William McKnight, who replaced Edgar Ober as president of the company in 1929, “wasn’t going to skimp on the costs of launching this product into production and promoting it to the market.” Only he decided to advertise not the amazing properties of the new Scotch for sealing cellophane packages (for these purposes, a more economical and convenient method had been invented by that time - melting cellophane), but its “Scottish” essence. The US economy had already been in a depression for a year, later called the Great Depression. Americans have become surprisingly thrifty and stingy - well, just true Scots. They suddenly became concerned about extending the life of old things. And here the transparent adhesive tape came in handy. It began to be used for gluing torn book pages and wallpaper, for mending clothes, toys, and even “restoring” broken nails. It was precisely these possibilities for using adhesive tape that William McKnight focused on in his advertising campaign to promote a new product to the market.
And McKnight hit the mark. 3M was one of the few companies to succeed during the Great Depression—while others were counting losses, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing's sales, production capacity, and workforce grew. Without skimping on advertising, McKnight significantly increased the funds invested in the development of new products. “This period was the golden era of our research,” he later said. And indeed it is. If in 1920 the company produced only sandpaper, then by 1937 it accounted for only 37% of sales. And 63% goes to paper and cellophane adhesive tapes, roofing materials and adhesives. At the same time, the company has developed many variants of each product. There were 10 thousand abrasive materials alone. New products under the Scotch brand have also appeared.
Following paper and cellophane adhesive tapes, Dick Drew's students invented electrical tape, decorative tape, double-sided adhesive tape, colored marking tape, etc. Their names always included the word scotch. In 1947, the company began producing Scotch amateur tape, and in 1954, Scotch video tape. In 1962, acetate adhesive tape appeared. Wound on a spool, it appears opaque, but when glued it becomes invisible. In addition, inscriptions can be applied to it and it does not turn yellow over time.
Cellophane tape was also improved. One problem that Drew never solved was that Scotch was difficult to peel off the reel. When you cut a piece of tape, the free end immediately sticks, and then it is not only difficult to tear it off the reel, but also to find it. Therefore, the free end of the tape had to be hooked to something. In addition, you should always have scissors on hand to cut the tape. After a year and a half of testing, 3M sales manager John Borden came up with a device that held the free end of the tape on a reel and made it easy to cut pieces from it.
The scope of application of Dick Drew's cellophane tape is also expanding. Farmers began using it to glue cracked turkey eggs together. Car enthusiasts should insulate the pump handles to protect their hands in severe frosts. For seamstresses, use it instead of thread when basting stitched parts. Carpenters - apply to plywood along the cut line to avoid splitting. Girls use it to attach corsages to evening dresses. Veterinarians put splints on birds' broken legs. Parents should seal medicine bottles so that children cannot open them, and sockets so that children do not poke their fingers into them or insert various objects into them. Some mothers even started covering mosquito bites with tape to prevent their children from scratching the wounds.
Perhaps nothing can replace duct tape if you need to collect tiny shards of broken glass or quickly and briefly connect something together. True, the tape itself sometimes also leaves a sticky mark on the surface, and to remove it, there is only one way: you need to press fresh tape to the surface and quickly remove it. True, 3M claims that their Scotch does not leave adhesive traces (well, almost none) - this is what adhesive tapes from other companies do.
Look, it even exists. And I'll remind you The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -
"Scotch" means "Scottish" in English. Any English-speaking man will immediately understand this word in the correct sense. Scotch is Scotch whiskey. The drink is strong, the drink is pleasant, especially in the nasty and slushy winter English weather, worse than which can only be the weather in Scotland, which is accustomed to being a special person here too. Scotch is an old and noble drink due to its age. There is no point in asking who invented it. It’s as pointless as asking who invented grappa, chacha, pervach and other moonshine. Folk art. We drive ourselves, we drink ourselves and we treat others.
In Russian, and not only, this word has a second meaning. Scotch tape is called adhesive tape. If you look at the list of brands of one of the leading companies producing products for office and home, 3M, then you can see the Scotch brand in a place of honor. This brand has become a household name. The word “scotch” is used to describe any adhesive tape not only in Russia, but also in the USA and Canada. In many other countries, duct tape is called by another British brand, Sellotape.
The name of the company where adhesive tape was invented, 3M, stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. The name suggests that when the company was founded, it was intended to produce abrasives (among other things, sandpaper) from corundum, a hard mineral found in Minnesota. The company did not want to put intermediaries between itself and its customers and supplied sandpaper directly to its customers. The clients were large engineering companies, building materials stores and car service companies.
A young man named Richard Gurley Drew (1899 – 1980) in 1923 he joined the 3M company as a technician. His job was to test the new “Wetordry” sandpaper on customers’ jobsites.
At one of my clients' auto repair shops, sandpaper was used to sand the body of a car before painting. Then two-tone car painting became fashionable in America. Richard Drew noticed that the border between the two colors was uneven. This was due to the fact that the mechanics were unable to reliably cover the surface that had already been painted once from being coated with a different color. The young man promised the painters who were doing the painting to come up with some kind of device for this.
By that time, pharmacies sold an adhesive plaster, invented in 1901 by the German pharmacist Oskar Troplowitz. The patch was intended to protect damaged skin. It seemed to glue the damaged tissues together, allowing them to grow together. The adhesive plaster was a cloth tape coated with an adhesive compound. The glue was applied only to the edges of the tape.
Richard Drew made a similar ribbon from 2 inches (5 cm) wide cellophane. He applied a layer of glue along each edge of the tape.
But during testing, the invention disappointed both the laboratory assistant and the workers. When applying paint, the tape wrinkled. The reason was obvious. The layer of glue applied only to the edges of the tape did not fix it reliably, without displacement.
In the English-speaking world, the Scots have a reputation for being stingy. Although this is not stinginess, but healthy saving, which the cat Matroskin has been talking about for so long. One way or another, the disgruntled painter returned his “Scotch tape” to Richard Drew for serious modification. Like, don’t skimp on the glue, you fucking economist. Despite the fact that the ribbon did not stick to the surface well enough, the new name had already stuck to it.
It took several years to finalize. Naturally, the cellophane tape was coated not only along the edges, but also over the entire surface with a specially developed, very sticky composition. The composition itself had to remain sticky for a long time, not flow off the tape and not dry out when storing the roll.
The birthday of Scotch tape can be considered September 8, 1930. On this day, the first roll of adhesive-coated cellophane tape was shipped to a customer in Chicago. The customer gave an enthusiastic response about the quality and necessity of this product.
Scotch, oddly enough, appeared at just the right time. The Great Depression began. And people began to repair things that previously would have probably been thrown away and bought new items instead. One of the materials used in such repair operations was tape. Adhesive tape conquered the market and began to be used in a variety of industries: electrical engineering, construction, automotive, and everyday life. And, of course, as an indispensable packaging material.
In 1923, Richard Drew took a job as a laboratory technician at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (now called MMM), which produced sandpaper.
Management assigned him to oversee the testing of a new model of Wetordry sandpaper in stores and car repair shops. Once, while in one of these workshops, he noticed that when painting cars with two or more colors, the dividing lines were sloppy. He promised the painter to come up with something. Drew brought 2-inch-wide adhesive tape to the auto repair shop for testing. The painter decided to use a prototype, but when he started applying a different color, he noticed that the tape was warping. Taking a closer look, the painter realized that, in order to save money, the glue was applied only to the edges of the tape, and informed the inventor about this.
But, since there was no funding, only a few years later Drew began refining his invention. And on September 8, 1930, a prototype of the tape was sent for testing to a client in Chicago. The results met all expectations and costs.
There are several versions of where the name scotch tape came from. According to one of them, the Americans nicknamed the adhesive tape scotch tape (English: scotch - Scottish) since at that time there were legends about Scottish stinginess, and the glue was initially applied in adhesive tape only along the edge.
Scotch tape was originally used to wrap food, but during the Great Depression people came up with many other uses for tape.
In 1932, John Borden improved the tape by providing it with a feeder with a blade for cutting a piece of tape with one hand.
The world's first adhesive tape was made from rubber, oils and resins on a cellophane base. It was waterproof and withstood a wide range of temperatures. However, scotch tape was originally intended to seal food wrappers. It was to be used by bakers, grocers and meat packers. But people, forced to save money during the Great Depression, themselves came up with hundreds of new ways to use tape at work and at home: from sealing bags of clothes to storing broken eggs. It was then that the tape met torn pages of books and documents, broken toys, windows that were not sealed for the winter, and even dilapidated banknotes.
In 1953, Soviet scientists discovered that, thanks to triboluminescence, tape unwound in a vacuum can emit X-rays. In 2008, an experiment was carried out by American scientists who showed that in some cases the radiation power is sufficient to leave an X-ray image on photographic paper.
The glue used in the tape eats into the paper over time, leaving marks that penetrate the entire thickness of the paper. The Dead Sea Scrolls were taped together to preserve scattered fragments of ancient manuscripts; Over the course of 50 years, the adhesive from the tape glued from the inside out penetrated the scroll and began to destroy the side of the scroll on which the text itself is written. A special restoration department has been established at the Israel Antiquities Authority, which, among other things, removes tape and glue from the remains of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In 1923, Richard Drew took a job as a laboratory technician at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (now called MMM), which produced sandpaper.
Management assigned him to oversee the testing of a new model of Wetordry sandpaper in stores and car repair shops. Once, while in one of these workshops, he noticed that when painting cars with two or more colors, the dividing lines were sloppy. He promised the painter to come up with something. Drew brought 2-inch-wide adhesive tape to the auto repair shop for testing. The painter decided to use a prototype, but when he started applying a different color, he noticed that the tape was warping. Taking a closer look, the painter realized that, in order to save money, the glue was applied only to the edges of the tape, and informed the inventor about this.
But, since there was no funding, only a few years later Drew began refining his invention. And on September 8, 1930, a prototype of the tape was sent for testing to a client in Chicago. The results met all expectations and costs.
There are several versions of where the name scotch tape came from. According to one of them, the Americans nicknamed the adhesive tape scotch tape (English scotch - Scottish) since at that time there were legends about Scottish stinginess, and the glue was initially applied only to the edge of the tape.
Scotch tape was originally used to wrap food, but during the Great Depression people came up with many other uses for tape.
In 1932, John Borden improved the tape by providing it with a feeder with a blade for cutting a piece of tape with one hand.
The world's first adhesive tape was made from rubber, oils and resins on a cellophane base. It was waterproof and withstood a wide range of temperatures. However, scotch tape was originally intended to seal food wrappers. It was to be used by bakers, grocers and meat packers. But people, forced to save money during the Great Depression, themselves came up with hundreds of new ways to use tape at work and at home: from sealing bags of clothes to storing broken eggs. It was then that the tape met torn pages of books and documents, broken toys, windows that were not sealed for the winter, and even dilapidated banknotes.
In 1953, Soviet scientists discovered that, thanks to triboluminescence, tape unwound in a vacuum can emit X-rays. In 2008, an experiment was carried out by American scientists who showed that in some cases the radiation power is sufficient to leave an X-ray image on photographic paper.
The glue used in the tape eats into the paper over time, leaving marks that penetrate the entire thickness of the paper. The Dead Sea Scrolls were taped together to preserve scattered fragments of ancient manuscripts; Over the course of 50 years, the adhesive from the tape glued from the inside out penetrated the scroll and began to destroy the side of the scroll on which the text itself is written. A special restoration department has been established at the Israel Antiquities Authority, which, among other things, removes tape and glue from the remains of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I won’t exaggerate if I say that almost every housewife has tape in her house. But few people know how it appeared and who created it. But whoever invented scotch tape did a great job.
In 1923, Richard Drew was hired by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (now 3M) as a laboratory technician. The company produced sandpaper. Her area of research also included waterproof surfaces. A new type of sandpaper, called "Wetordry", was being tested in shops and auto repair shops. Richard Drew was assigned to monitor the progress of the experiment.
While working one day in one of the workshops, Richard observed the painting process. He saw that the lines that separated one color from another were quite jagged. After talking with the painter about this topic, he promised that he would think about how to fix this problem. From this moment the history of scotch tape begins.
The next time he came to the auto repair shop, Drew took some adhesive tape with him to test it. During painting, the tape, which was 5 cm wide, began to warp. This was caused by saving glue; it was applied only along the edges of the tape. Testing of a prototype of the tape, developed in 1930, gave positive results, all investments were fully justified.
There are two versions of why adhesive tape went down in history under the name “scotch tape”. According to the first, the name is directly associated with the Scots (“scotch” - Scottish), or, more precisely, with their stinginess, as described in the legends of that time. If we adhere to the second version, then the name of the tape was given after the words of a painter who tested the tape and noticed the savings in glue. He told the company representative to tell his Scotch boss to make the tape more adhesive. So they believe that this supposedly spoken phrase gave it its name - the Scottish Ribbon. This name was originally given to transparent tape.
It is worth knowing that Scotch tape is a trademark of 3M. Here in Russia, we call any adhesive tape tape. The 3M company was the first to enter the Russian market, making the name adhesive tape a household word. In 1932, Robert Drew's invention was improved by John Borden, who managed to equip the tape with a blade feeder. Now the tape could be easily cut with one hand.
