Masking tape

Masking tape emerged from the collision of Roaring Twenties fashion and 3M's sandpaper business. Two-tone automobile paint jobs had become status symbols by 1923, but painters faced an impossible dilemma: newspaper and library paste left residue or tore off the underlying paint, surgical tape let paint seep through its fabric backing, and stiff kraft paper cracked when conforming to curves. Richard Drew, a 22-year-old lab assistant at 3M, observed this struggle while delivering Wetordry sandpaper samples to St. Paul auto body shops.

Drew was a "banjo-playing, engineering school dropout" who had joined 3M in 1921 when it was "a modest manufacturer of sandpaper." The company had nearly failed—founded in 1902 to mine corundum for grinding wheels, only to discover their mineral deposits were worthless feldspar. By 1916, 3M had pivoted to manufacturing sandpaper with purchased abrasives and finally achieved financial stability.

Drew spent two years testing vegetable oils, resins, chicle, linseed oil, and glue glycerine before settling on cabinet glue mixed with glycerin, applied to two-inch-wide tan crepe paper. His first trial in 1925 failed spectacularly—the tape fell off because Drew had applied adhesive only along the edges to save money. A frustrated painter told him: "Take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it." The name stuck, applied to a product whose original sin was stinginess.

The cascade extended far beyond automobiles. Drew's success led directly to his 1930 invention of Scotch Transparent Tape, using DuPont's newly invented cellophane as backing. The transparent tape arrived just as the Great Depression began, and Americans embraced it for "mend and make do"—repairing clothing, capping milk bottles, even mending cracked eggshells. Today 3M manufactures over 900 pressure-sensitive tape products. Drew's technologies account for more than 20% of the company's sales, and Scotch Transparent Tape sits in 90% of American homes—all descending from a sandpaper salesman who watched auto painters struggle with two-tone paint jobs.