May 27 marks the annual national celebration of cellophane tape, a convenience taken for granted in nearly every household and office throughout America.

It was brought to us 85 years ago by an ingenious and persistent banjo-plucking college dropout.
In a 1985 national poll Scotch tape bested no-iron fabrics, aluminum foil and T-shirts as the “most indispensable household product.”

Richard Gurley Drew, a 22-year-old lab assistant with 3M, was assigned to deliver samples of the company’s sandpaper to automobile paint shops.

In 1923 two-toned auto paint jobs were all the rage, but painters had difficulty making clean dividing lines between the colors. The tape then available either left a stubborn gummy residue on the car or removed chunks of paint when removed, necessitating repeated repainting of the vehicle.

Drew frequently encountered the painters’ frustrations during his visits and vowed to create a tape that would provide a seal during the painting process and remove easily without damaging the resultant paint job.

He returned to the lab and did just that. In 1925 he delivered the first roll of masking tape to immediate and overwhelming accolades — after one brief hiccup.

A dissatisfied painter complained that the tape did not include enough adhesive, which was originally applied only to the tape’s edges, and returned the roll with a note: “Take this back to your Scotch (slang for ‘stingy’) bosses and tell them to put more adhesive on it.”

The company reworked the product and adopted the Scotch brand to denote the masking tape’s economical benefits.

Rival company DuPont invented cellophane in 1929. The thin, transparent, moisture-proof sheets were used by grocers, bakers and butchers to showcase their merchandise.

But existing dull-colored tapes spoiled the aesthetics of the packaging. “What if,” reasoned Drew, “adhesive could be applied to cellophane to create a transparent tape?”

After two years of dogged determination, Drew answered that question in the laboratory. His “cellulose tape” — later “cellophane tape,” and finally “transparent tape” — came out too late for its original purpose: DuPont had developed a way to seal the cellophane wrap with heat.

But the product was perfect for Depression-era families, who saved precious dollars using the tape to repair toys, lamp shades, window curtains, cracked eggs, broken fingernails, torn book pages and cracked ceiling plaster.

Drew acquired 30 patents during his life and passed away in 1980 after 40 years with 3M. In 2007 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

[mlw_quizmaster quiz=4]

1. d (it was cast iron). 2. c. 3. d. 4. d. 5. b. 6. a. 7. b. 8. c.