#Tape September 8

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A company that was known for sandpaper, inspired by auto painters difficulty in painting two colors, and employing a banjo playing engineer invented transparent TAPE.

The company was 3M.

Scotch tape was the world’s first transparent adhesive tape. It was invented by a 3M engineer named Richard Drew. He started work at 3M in 1923

Drew was put in charge of testing 3M’s Wetordry brand sandpaper at a auto body shop. He observed that the auto painters were having a hard time making clean dividing lines on two-color paint jobs. That gave him the inspiration to invent the world’s first masking TAPE in 1925, as a solution to car painters’ dilemma. That invention led him five years later to invent transparent TAPE.

If you want to know why 3M began branding all of their tape as Scotch TAPE read below.