Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Quick note before we begin,
Speaker 1: this episode touches on discrimination in a surprising way. We
Speaker 1: just want you to be ready for that. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're going to approach it objectively and with empathy, as
Speaker 1: we do all of those dare I say, sticky topics.
Speaker 1: There we go, dare you? Yeah, there's a question I've
Speaker 1: been meaning to ask, but now you're astly right. And
Speaker 1: it is surprising in that, like so many things in history,
Speaker 1: the most innocuous subjects can often be a breeding ground
Speaker 1: for very uninnocuous racism and and xenophobia and and weird stuff,
Speaker 1: weird behavior, and oftentimes these things are tied to works
Speaker 1: of literature, inventions perhaps you know, or people that you
Speaker 1: can't really always throw the baby out with the bathwater,
Speaker 1: and today is a great example of that. We still
Speaker 1: use this product all the time, especially you know, if
Speaker 1: you're like a office worker, like you know, working at
Speaker 1: Kinkos or something, or an educator. What are we talking about.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Scotch tape, um O G Scotch tape
Speaker 1: from the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company is now known
Speaker 1: as three AM. I guess that's for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing.
Speaker 1: That is literally I learned something new today, and we
Speaker 1: want to start out with a big shout out to
Speaker 1: our or one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
Speaker 1: Did you know? Did you know what three M stood for?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. I never even thought about it. I actually
Speaker 1: did just because of another show and because it's such
Speaker 1: a huge company now. But I'm Ben your Knoll and
Speaker 1: this is the weird, weirdly xenophobic history of Scotch tape,
Speaker 1: so we all know what we're talking about. I think,
Speaker 1: especially as you get closer to holidays, a lot more
Speaker 1: people are buying scotch tape for presents, right, and that's
Speaker 1: double sided that your thing. I don't can't stand the stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess I can see the value of it, but
Speaker 1: I just tend to stick with regular scotch. I only
Speaker 1: just learned how to properly wrap a present like last year,
Speaker 1: so you need to be you need a certain threshold
Speaker 1: of skill in present rapping for double sided tape to matter.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm always impressed with it, But this stuff
Speaker 1: cellophane tape. It's got that kind of eponymous trademark thing
Speaker 1: that happens. A lot of folks will call stuff that's
Speaker 1: not branded scotch tape just scotch tape. It comes about
Speaker 1: from a time, comes about from a time when Scotch
Speaker 1: was a an epithet derogatory term. It wasn't just describing
Speaker 1: people from Scotland. It had the added connotation in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties of implying that they were cheap skates. So
Speaker 1: if something was Scotch, it was cheap, or people might
Speaker 1: even say, just hypothetically, they might say, you know, you
Speaker 1: really scotched me on that one. Don't say that. To
Speaker 1: the point about the unsavory origin of seemingly innocuous things,
Speaker 1: you'll find this in a lot of common freezes in
Speaker 1: American English, like don't say cow taw, trying to say
Speaker 1: pow wow, or off the reservation, or of course mumbo jumbo,
Speaker 1: all of which have these really messed up at amount
Speaker 1: etymological origins. Definitely, I don't say wow wow or how Now,
Speaker 1: anything that rhymes is usually racist. I'm kidding, that's a joke,
Speaker 1: that's not true. Rhyming is wonderful, but you're right. Then
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that and and honestly, we've
Speaker 1: been called out sometimes on uh potentially shaky racist etymologies
Speaker 1: for phrases that are in fact innocuous that we have
Speaker 1: then gone back to look into and investigates, you know,
Speaker 1: the accusations, uh and and found them to be more
Speaker 1: you know, rumor than than reality. So it's it's very interesting,
Speaker 1: especially when you go back and you're using these kind
Speaker 1: of like dated phrases. But it's so interesting the way
Speaker 1: these types of terms can kind of come in and
Speaker 1: out of fashion and then in and out of like
Speaker 1: being considered offensive or not. An interesting one that I
Speaker 1: just thought about is um a term that has definitely
Speaker 1: fallen out of out of political correctness, referring to the
Speaker 1: roma people. That also a form of it could have
Speaker 1: been used to refer to somebody ripping you off or
Speaker 1: are you know chief skate kind of vibe, and that
Speaker 1: term has become so kind of canceled that even a
Speaker 1: moth named after this term, the Gypsy moth uh, was
Speaker 1: renamed yeah recently. So these these things matter. They do
Speaker 1: also shout out to a a poet uh MC and
Speaker 1: musician that I absolutely love, who also changed her name
Speaker 1: as a result of learning that specific etymology. So no
Speaker 1: name if you happen't her name was originally no name,
Speaker 1: and then the other word. She just changed no names,
Speaker 1: no name. If you're listening, I think you might made
Speaker 1: the right decision. Big fan here ridiculous history. I wonder
Speaker 1: what your opinion of Scotch tape is. And maybe at
Speaker 1: the end of today's show, we're gonna ask how long
Speaker 1: it will be able to keep this name. Let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about it. Though the tape is amazing, there's so
Speaker 1: many amazing inventions that we often take for granted because
Speaker 1: we who are alive in two we're lucky enough to
Speaker 1: grow up with them. But it turns out producing the
Speaker 1: first role of this cellophane tape, Scotch tape, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just an uphill battle. It was kind of a feat
Speaker 1: of engineering, especially if we look at the story of
Speaker 1: the guy who created it. So there's this guy, a
Speaker 1: kid really, he's twenty three years old. His name is
Speaker 1: Richard G. Drew Dick. To his friends. He is a
Speaker 1: research assistant at three n and he is uh. He
Speaker 1: went to engineering school, but he dropped out. He wasn't
Speaker 1: the world's foremost expert on chemistry, but he is the
Speaker 1: guy who came up with masking tape, and masking tape
Speaker 1: is sort of the predecessor of transparent tape or Scotch
Speaker 1: brand transparent tape. Yeah, there's a great article on ACS
Speaker 1: dot org, which is uh, American Chemistry Society their their
Speaker 1: their slogan is chemistry for Life. So I'm guessing that's
Speaker 1: what this means. But there's a really good, just kind
Speaker 1: of play by play of this guy's life and the
Speaker 1: history of Scotch tape. But that's right. This article also
Speaker 1: refers to him as a banjo player, as if that's
Speaker 1: like a term of abuse, you know, he said. They
Speaker 1: say it was the brainchild of a banjo playing engineering
Speaker 1: school dropout who had a limited background in chemistry that
Speaker 1: had no idea what he was getting into when he
Speaker 1: told a client he could solve his problem. That is
Speaker 1: where often the genius ideas come from. Yeah, problem to solve,
Speaker 1: And I agree. I like the I like the idea
Speaker 1: of banjo playing as a condemnation. Like picture a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuffy old patricians in a three m boardroom saying
Speaker 1: this man dropped out of of engineering school. He knows
Speaker 1: nothing of chemistry and rumor has it he plays banjo
Speaker 1: and everyone right. It also make it does make you think,
Speaker 1: it gives you deliverance wipes U. I can also picture
Speaker 1: these executives or somebody working like, well, he's in there
Speaker 1: in his office or his cubicle. What's that racket? Dicky
Speaker 1: gets out here? What is that thing? Get it out
Speaker 1: and they smash it in front of his eyes. Um,
Speaker 1: you with your ham office, I'm taking too far, But
Speaker 1: where man, here's the thing. In the early nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: there was a style of like paint for cars that
Speaker 1: was very popular. To tone. To tone things in general
Speaker 1: were popular in the twenties and then thirties. You know,
Speaker 1: like think of like saddle shoes and uh saddle shoes yea,
Speaker 1: and example of saddle shoes. But it was difficult, right
Speaker 1: because to get that two tone look you needed to
Speaker 1: have you need to make it so that the paint
Speaker 1: wouldn't bleed, you know, so you could like literally mask
Speaker 1: off one side from the other while you painted one
Speaker 1: color and then you know, have this dividing line that
Speaker 1: would be clean. Um. So this was a problem that
Speaker 1: hadn't really existed prior exactly. I mean, you know, there
Speaker 1: would be other things that this would solve as well.
Speaker 1: But this kind of fashion conundrum led to some you know,
Speaker 1: folks at three M and probably other companies puting their
Speaker 1: heads together to try to figure out what to do.
Speaker 1: There were some sort of life hackey examples that weren't
Speaker 1: really that great. Yeah, the thing was people had had
Speaker 1: a mask off sections of whatever while painting things in
Speaker 1: the past. But now this is such a common problem
Speaker 1: that people are making their own cottage industry solutions. So automakers,
Speaker 1: body shops, you know, these classic mcgivers of the car world.
Speaker 1: They improvised. They take old newspaper and they glue it
Speaker 1: over the body and the windows with sometimes homemade glue,
Speaker 1: sometimes medical grade surgical adhesive tape. And they did this
Speaker 1: because if you're a fan of car from the twenties,
Speaker 1: you know that you need that sharp line, that sharp
Speaker 1: border between the two different colors. But because they were improvising,
Speaker 1: they weren't using stuff custom made for this purpose. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: the pendulum of their solutions swung too far in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. This this glue, these adhesives would work so
Speaker 1: well that trying to remove them messed up the paint job.
Speaker 1: Shout out to anyone who's had to paint a house
Speaker 1: when they move in or move out. Around this time,
Speaker 1: three M is already making a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1: They make a lot of a braces, mainly sand paper.
Speaker 1: Think of sand paper or for our second and third examples,
Speaker 1: other kinds of sand paper. So this guy drew. One
Speaker 1: of his first jobs there was taking these samples of
Speaker 1: a kind of waterproof sand paper three M made and
Speaker 1: bringing it to auto body shops to test it. So
Speaker 1: picture this one morning. It's nineteen twenty three, Max whatever
Speaker 1: our nineteen twenties music is here perfect. Drew walks into
Speaker 1: this job and he overhears this amazing cursing. Now you know,
Speaker 1: the US or American English, i should say, is a
Speaker 1: beautiful language for profanity, and this guy is hearing an
Speaker 1: artist in the world of profanity. And the reason the
Speaker 1: guy is so mad is because they're homemade painting Solutions
Speaker 1: had yet again messed up a paint job. And if
Speaker 1: you've ever been involved in auto body paint, you know
Speaker 1: it's the time intensive process and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that could go wrong. So the guy who
Speaker 1: had just messed this up. He is livid, and he's
Speaker 1: just screaming, you know, to the universe, the gods and
Speaker 1: everyone in the universe about the injustice of it all.
Speaker 1: And this is not the first time Drew seen this,
Speaker 1: but this is the first time he speaks up. So
Speaker 1: he comes in and he's like, what do you say, fella,
Speaker 1: if I told you I could make a tape that
Speaker 1: will solve all your problems? And uh, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to this great A. C. S article.
Speaker 1: One historian notes Drew was kind of talking out the
Speaker 1: side of his neck here. He did not know how
Speaker 1: to make this, He did not know how it could
Speaker 1: be made. He just knew there had to be a
Speaker 1: better way allah television infomercial. And this historian said, he
Speaker 1: was just he was just optimistic because he was young
Speaker 1: in life, had not you know, sand papered him down
Speaker 1: as much as it does others. Ah, the optimism of
Speaker 1: youth eternal and strong and sometimes misplaced, but not in
Speaker 1: this case, because honestly, you know, what was most important
Speaker 1: here was that he identified a problem them that needed
Speaker 1: to be solved, um anytime. I mean, that's really kind
Speaker 1: of the root of most kinds of innovation is you
Speaker 1: you you create something that people didn't even know they needed,
Speaker 1: you know, like like you've got people doing this process
Speaker 1: that's like literally ruining their their paint jobs, and they're thinking,
Speaker 1: this is, this is the only way, and this is
Speaker 1: We've just got to figure it out and deal with it.
Speaker 1: And then someone comes along and says, but what if
Speaker 1: I could make a tape that isn't that sticky. What
Speaker 1: if there were a tape that wouldn't ruin your paint
Speaker 1: job and it wouldn't be you know, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, masking tape is useless for for like actually
Speaker 1: sticking things to walls for long. Uh, it's pretty useless
Speaker 1: for a lot of things. But it's lack of stickiness,
Speaker 1: or it's sort of mid level stickiness is what really
Speaker 1: makes it work. So when Drew grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: one of the Twin Cities, he spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time honing his band just skills and playing in local
Speaker 1: like dance kind of bands that would basically essentially you know,
Speaker 1: gig playing at parties and sock hops. In the life.
Speaker 1: He actually got enough money to pay his way into
Speaker 1: the university of Minnesota, but just at the top of
Speaker 1: the show he found to be a little too difficult.
Speaker 1: He'd rather be playing banjo um, so he dropped out
Speaker 1: after only eighteen months. Instead decided to take a correspondence
Speaker 1: course in machine design, which was enough, apparently to get
Speaker 1: him noticed and hired by three M. And that is
Speaker 1: what led him to this moment that we are describing,
Speaker 1: this moment of I'm gonna make a promise that I
Speaker 1: don't know if I could necessarily follow through with, but
Speaker 1: I feel like between me and and my colleagues and
Speaker 1: you know, the know how a three M and all
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've already made, and all the chemicals
Speaker 1: we have at our disposal, surely there's there's a solution
Speaker 1: here somewhere. Yeah. He was saying, Look, if the first
Speaker 1: M doesn't get it, we got three other ends we
Speaker 1: can apply to the problem. He also had the support
Speaker 1: of his bosses at the company in general. They were
Speaker 1: just looking to diversify their products, so they said, okay,
Speaker 1: this is a good idea. Like I've always said, you know,
Speaker 1: probably ninety eight per cent of the of the trick
Speaker 1: to making a good invention is asking the right question,
Speaker 1: identifying the problems. So so he starts with waterproof sand paper.
Speaker 1: Three m already makes it. He's got experience with it.
Speaker 1: They use an adhesive to get the grit right on
Speaker 1: their paper base. He starts experimenting. This takes him two years.
Speaker 1: He goes through vegetable oil, different kinds of resin, chick
Speaker 1: l the stuff from which chick lit gum derives glue, glycerin,
Speaker 1: and so eventually about two years later, he makes this
Speaker 1: formula that uses cabinet maker's glue and glycerin, and adding
Speaker 1: the glycerin to the glue keeps the stuff sticky. And
Speaker 1: he treats crepe paper that's going to be his base.
Speaker 1: He creates this product called Scotch Brand masking tape. It
Speaker 1: it hears pretty well, but when you pull it off,
Speaker 1: this is the key. It doesn't muck up the stuff
Speaker 1: it was adhering to. So this is the origin of
Speaker 1: what is called Scotch Brand tape. Now, but this isn't
Speaker 1: the famous one. It was the second one he made
Speaker 1: that people really grabbed onto. It was he this is funny.
Speaker 1: He would later say. This was serendipity, which he defines
Speaker 1: as the gift of finding something valuable and something not
Speaker 1: even sought. Yeah, it's just that, you know, not not
Speaker 1: even knowing that he needed something and then figuring it
Speaker 1: out serendipity. I think I figure out the fourth M
Speaker 1: and three. Uh you know there's a fourth the magic
Speaker 1: it's it's MOXI. Maybe it also could be magic. Um.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. But I just want to point out,
Speaker 1: like two years working with vegetable oils. I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like he just went right back to the shop
Speaker 1: and just like whipped this thing out. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is definitely you know, because it mattered, like you had
Speaker 1: to get these things balanced out right where it would
Speaker 1: stick just enough, but not specifically with paint. Probably had
Speaker 1: to do with you know, what kind of materials won't
Speaker 1: like bind with the paint and therefore ripped the paint off,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So very very interesting and a lot of
Speaker 1: stick tuitiveness. Always say but yeah, yeah, okay, thanks Max,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. But yeah, serendipity indeed, um, And he
Speaker 1: decided that there was in fact another use for that
Speaker 1: two years of toiling, uh you know, over various oils
Speaker 1: and and and resins. He started looking for that thing
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine, full four years after Scotch brand masking
Speaker 1: tape hit the market. Yeah, yeah, this is where we
Speaker 1: introduce flex Linum company. I love old school company names.
Speaker 1: It's fabulous. Yeah, it's like it's like Globo cap that
Speaker 1: sounds made up. It's fabulous. I guess know what Colliquico is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So they they had a video game councils in the
Speaker 1: there were a Connecticut Leather and Latex company. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember off the top of my my head, but they
Speaker 1: owned video game councils in the seventies and eighties and
Speaker 1: competing with Atari. And then they were like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't like to send a street Let's go buy
Speaker 1: these uh like toys and these dolls in Georgia. And
Speaker 1: so then they own Cabbage Patch Kids Connecticut Leather Company,
Speaker 1: and they've got a creepy, creepy, uh creepy Cabbage Patch
Speaker 1: headquarters here in Georgia. Worth of visit worth the secret
Speaker 1: ingredient their Max's money. Oh yeah, you can. You can
Speaker 1: go in whatever direction you want if you start early
Speaker 1: enough and have enough money. Check out some of the
Speaker 1: earlier car stuff episodes on the ore gen of automaker
Speaker 1: companies and coach builders. A lot of them were in
Speaker 1: other businesses well before autos, just like how Nintendo was
Speaker 1: a playing card company. True story. So this place, flax
Speaker 1: Lenum Company, they make insulation out of St. Paul and
Speaker 1: they said, look, we are we got a deal to
Speaker 1: insulate hundreds of refrigerator cars for the railroads. But we
Speaker 1: have a complication. These insulated areas. They need to be
Speaker 1: wrapped and sealed with something moisture proof. And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe Scotch brand masking tape will work, but it didn't. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in just that four year span we're talking about, our
Speaker 1: boy Drew has become the technical director of three MS
Speaker 1: Product Fabrication Laboratory. Cool. He earned his stripes. So they
Speaker 1: work around the clock, well not around the clock, but
Speaker 1: they definitely put in more than forty hours a week
Speaker 1: on this and they can't come up with anything bub gets.
Speaker 1: They couldn't make something water tight. But then they realized
Speaker 1: they're not operating in a vacuum. No one is. Another
Speaker 1: company you may have heard of, the famously evil DuPont Company,
Speaker 1: had developed cellophane, and cellophane is dope because it's moisture proof,
Speaker 1: and they thought of it as just like a packaging material.
Speaker 1: But another guy at three M thought about this and
Speaker 1: showed a sample of cellophane to Drew, and Drew had
Speaker 1: that Eureka moment you know what I mean, Uh, all
Speaker 1: trumpets and angel farts and the sky opens up and
Speaker 1: he goes, there it is. He started testing cellophane and
Speaker 1: he said, look, this will work for our pressure sensitive
Speaker 1: removable tape. He finds a lead finally, after after butting
Speaker 1: his head against so many not sticky enough solutions, and
Speaker 1: they say, look we have figured out the answer for you,
Speaker 1: flax Let them. But flax lit Them was no longer interested,
Speaker 1: so that deal wouldn't work out. They has spent so
Speaker 1: much time trying to figure out this solution and now
Speaker 1: they had it all too late. But it was only
Speaker 1: too late for flax Let Them. There were all kinds
Speaker 1: of other people who said this will be perfect for us,
Speaker 1: a lot of food industry folks. Well sure, I mean.
Speaker 1: The idea was to be able to use this tape
Speaker 1: for tape like uses in um conditions that maybe were
Speaker 1: higher moisture, like like what do we say, refrigerated cars
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. So while flax Let Them
Speaker 1: may have presented the problem that needed solving. There were
Speaker 1: other you know clients for this thing. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were not the only one, So it wasn't like they
Speaker 1: were making this specifically as a single client for a
Speaker 1: single company. I mean they just kind of gave them
Speaker 1: the the impetus to reach out and and and figure
Speaker 1: this thing out. So by this point, cellophane was hot.
Speaker 1: It was big, it was it hit the scene. It
Speaker 1: was being you know, adopted big time in the industries
Speaker 1: specifically like meat packing, you know things, and same things
Speaker 1: we use it for today, grocers, you know, for like uh,
Speaker 1: imagine bags you know, cell fate type bags for produce
Speaker 1: and all of that. Baker's candlestick makers perhaps I'm not
Speaker 1: sure about that one specifically, but it was an important
Speaker 1: innovation because it was a moisture proof way of sealing
Speaker 1: things in, you know, and keeping things fresh. So Drew
Speaker 1: now being the you know, basically the head developing guy
Speaker 1: at three m Um, He's got like a you know,
Speaker 1: a team under him, and they press on. It took
Speaker 1: them just about another year to make their first marketable product. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was called within the industry and again this
Speaker 1: uh a cs dot org article refers to it as
Speaker 1: quote the longest and most discouraging months in three M history.
Speaker 1: They just couldn't crack the thing. It couldn't crack it
Speaker 1: sell thing. We're getting near heat and it would curl up.
Speaker 1: Or you would try to do some machine coding and
Speaker 1: the stuff would split everywhere. It broke, it tore. You
Speaker 1: couldn't even get a full roll of the stuff coded. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you did manage to get it coded by some miracle,
Speaker 1: then the adhesive would be uneven, would be gunky in
Speaker 1: some places and barely there and others. Also, it looked bad.
Speaker 1: It was a dark amber adhesive. It spoiled one of
Speaker 1: the selling points, which was this stuff was transparent. We're
Speaker 1: gonna find out how important color is in another episode
Speaker 1: on Ketchup, by the way, so stay tuned for sure,
Speaker 1: we don't we just just a little tease on that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that one of the reasons like
Speaker 1: McDonald's uses yellow and red as their primary branding colors,
Speaker 1: as those are colors that psychologically tend to make people hungry.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of science and psychology behind color. And again,
Speaker 1: like this is so interesting because who cares if it
Speaker 1: looks crappy as long as it does the job well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you cares is the consumer cares. The aesthetics matter,
Speaker 1: and then you want some that comes out looking neat
Speaker 1: and tidy, and and that's why so much energy and
Speaker 1: research and development money is spent on figuring out how
Speaker 1: to package things. Literally, stuff that you instantly throw away
Speaker 1: is what separates the thing that you buy from the
Speaker 1: thing you don't buy. You know, That's why a label matters.
Speaker 1: Why beer art, for example, is so very important, because
Speaker 1: you know, not everyone's a connoisseur of of of find
Speaker 1: boozes and spirits. So I mean that the choice often
Speaker 1: be between one or the other, which one has the
Speaker 1: flashiest logo. I gotta tell you, I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 1: Noel Max, all our fellow ridiculous historians. I'm confessing to
Speaker 1: millions of people now. I buy wine based on the
Speaker 1: stories I make up in my head about the background
Speaker 1: of the label. Like I roughly know a little bit
Speaker 1: about wine, but not very much at all. There's a
Speaker 1: cool bottle, I'm on board with you. I only buy
Speaker 1: wine from Francis Ford Coppola's private vineyard because that's what
Speaker 1: that's what you get when you buy Coppola wine. Well, Francis,
Speaker 1: I will be a great customer if you can come
Speaker 1: up with really enigmatic, fertile for story looking branding, Like
Speaker 1: I picked up a wine called Chaos Theory just because
Speaker 1: I thought this would be a great movie, and in
Speaker 1: in my head the cashier was not impressed with my pitch.
Speaker 1: And the speaking of packaging too, that's great. You're also
Speaker 1: a very imaginative person, and uh, I can see I
Speaker 1: guess this is being good fodder for for short story
Speaker 1: writing for you. But uh, speaking of packaging, Coppola's wine
Speaker 1: brand actually has a juice box looking I believe rose
Speaker 1: that's called Sophia, I think, named after his his daughter,
Speaker 1: the also incredible, so great childhood director Sofia Coppola not
Speaker 1: so good in The Godfather Part three, but we'll give
Speaker 1: her a pass on that because we went on to
Speaker 1: have a very worried and uh an excellent directing career
Speaker 1: that goes strong to this day. But yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: like a juice box of rose one and it sells
Speaker 1: like hot cakes, those those Brooklyn you know, wine moms
Speaker 1: love the stuff because you can carry it around to
Speaker 1: the park, you can hide it in your in your
Speaker 1: baby bag, even, Um, you don't have to look like
Speaker 1: a lush you just look you're drinking like a little
Speaker 1: juice box. But packaging matters. Color matters. This dark amber adhesive,
Speaker 1: you know, looking all splotchy and gross. Matter. They had
Speaker 1: to figure out another. They had to get back to
Speaker 1: the to the drawing board, back to experimenting with the
Speaker 1: oils and the resins and the and those cements and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, trying to write new machine. They
Speaker 1: were basically trying to figure out how to keep that
Speaker 1: that selling point of cellophane, the cellophaning point. Now take
Speaker 1: that out, Max, Do you don't, It's just too late
Speaker 1: that the damage has been done. Um, keep it, you know, solid,
Speaker 1: Keep it transparent. They wanted their additions to be literally transparent,
Speaker 1: and no one even could tell the difference. They found though,
Speaker 1: that that through the experimentation using a primer helped the
Speaker 1: sticky stuff hold evenly along the backing of the cello tape. Also,
Speaker 1: before we move on, I do have the pop Ben's
Speaker 1: bubble real quick. So in two thousand seven, there is
Speaker 1: a movie rate PG Releases called Chaos Theory. Watch it.
Speaker 1: It's starring Ryan Reynolds, Emily Mortimer, and Sarah Chalk. So,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Ben, but you're just doing this to put
Speaker 1: Max with the facts in there. That s enough, right now,
Speaker 1: Sarah Chalk from from Scrubs, Fame and Rick and Morty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: always lights, Sarah. Also, I'm I'm guessing that this is
Speaker 1: probably a low rent like Ian Malcolm kind of vibe.
Speaker 1: You know. Wasn't that his whole deal chaos theory? I yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I like them. I like the idea that I had,
Speaker 1: But of course I'm not gonna ding anybody. It's just
Speaker 1: a great name. You know. It's sold a bottle of
Speaker 1: wine to me as um as an absolute philistine when
Speaker 1: it comes to wine. We should also look into the
Speaker 1: origins of the word philistine, like our in our leud
Speaker 1: Eyed episode. But first, the tape, right, we're on tape
Speaker 1: talking about tape. Not really. This is a digital recording,
Speaker 1: but one day we'll do analog. So it's September eight.
Speaker 1: They've just gotten through one of the most depressing times
Speaker 1: in three M history as far as the nineties go,
Speaker 1: and they sent their first role of look we did
Speaker 1: it sell aphane tape to a client. The client loved
Speaker 1: it over the moon. But this still might not make
Speaker 1: for Scotch tape history Bigus du pont who helped give
Speaker 1: them this original innovation. Du Ponts have been working on
Speaker 1: their own stuff too. They made a heat ceiling process
Speaker 1: for cellophane, and this heat ceiling process greatly reduced just
Speaker 1: the demand for tape as a package seler. This is also,
Speaker 1: of course, to the earlier point about things not occurring
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. This is the first full year of
Speaker 1: what will be later called the Great Depression, not the
Speaker 1: best time to introduce a brand new, shiny thing, but
Speaker 1: it's still weather the depression, And this is where we
Speaker 1: get a little bit to the xenophobia. So how did
Speaker 1: the term scotch get associated with this masking tape and
Speaker 1: the cellulose tape. Well, when they were back back in
Speaker 1: the car painter shops, when Drew and the team we're
Speaker 1: testing this masking tape, one painter complained about the lack
Speaker 1: of adhesive, and according to one urban legend, this painter said,
Speaker 1: why are you so scotch with the adhesive? Meaning why
Speaker 1: are you such a cheap skate with the adhesive? And
Speaker 1: the other story, which is a little more directly aimed
Speaker 1: at people, says that the painter instead told Drew, you
Speaker 1: take this back to your Scotch bosses and tell them
Speaker 1: to put more adhesive on it. This painter, I guess,
Speaker 1: hated Scottish people. Is that is that what we are
Speaker 1: to take this is like based on an insult about
Speaker 1: the product in addition to an insult towards the people
Speaker 1: of Scotland. Yeah, it, which seems so. And the term
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it was just part of kind
Speaker 1: of the parlance of the time, to to quote the
Speaker 1: big Lebowski, Uh, Scotch was a racial slang that was
Speaker 1: thrown around refer any people being stingy or or cheap.
Speaker 1: And it was so such a known term that Drew
Speaker 1: felt this would be good branding and you know, ultimately
Speaker 1: applied this term to to the brand of the tape,
Speaker 1: initially the masking tape, and then it carried on and
Speaker 1: as we mentioned at the top of the show, or
Speaker 1: as you probably know if you've bought tape anytime recently,
Speaker 1: this is still a thing and a little part of
Speaker 1: the tape that you like rip off that sort of
Speaker 1: keeps it from you know, losing its edge, you know,
Speaker 1: to like to unfurl the tape from the spool. It's
Speaker 1: got a little Scottish tartan thing on it, you know,
Speaker 1: like the like the nesty hat, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like that that pattern that that checkered black and red patterns.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of still leaning into it. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: their attempt to just maybe no, no, no, no, let's
Speaker 1: just erasure, you know, and be like no, we just
Speaker 1: we just think the Scottish people are great. We want
Speaker 1: to we want to honor them and their culture with
Speaker 1: this tiny tartan on our rolls of tape. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems more like a marketing ploy to to step
Speaker 1: away from this legacy. But I can't say that for sure.
Speaker 1: But to your point, been based on our conversation about
Speaker 1: these kind of pejoratives, you know, and like the moth
Speaker 1: that's name has been changed, is this are we in
Speaker 1: sports team territory where things get so kind of like
Speaker 1: backlashy that that the team might have to change its
Speaker 1: name the three m sticky ahasive thing, like like like
Speaker 1: how the Washington team did their name for two seasons
Speaker 1: before settling for Commanders, which was somehow worse. It does
Speaker 1: I always thought that they also had a mascot originally
Speaker 1: Scottie mctape true story cartoon and boy wearing a kilt. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was true. Yeah, it's true. Scot tape ye first
Speaker 1: appeared in nineteen forty four, right before the tart and
Speaker 1: design and he was the mascot for two decades. I
Speaker 1: think so. Uh. They like, if you weren't around then,
Speaker 1: you probably believe wouldn't have seen that unless you had,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you have very thrifty, elderly family members
Speaker 1: who managed to keep ahold of their original Scotch tape
Speaker 1: without using it all. It's weird. Though. You won't find
Speaker 1: a lot of this history on three MS official website.
Speaker 1: If you go there, you'll see that they talk about
Speaker 1: Richard Drew and they talk about how important that tape
Speaker 1: became during the Great Depression. This is true. It made
Speaker 1: they were able to make simple repairs to household items.
Speaker 1: You know, you were mending things because you couldn't buy them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the website, they do describe
Speaker 1: him as a banjo player. Again, there must have been
Speaker 1: a weird moment in their boardroom. But three M itself
Speaker 1: is not a Scottish company, like we said. It started
Speaker 1: in northern Minnesota and Drew himself. We don't think he's
Speaker 1: of Scottish ancestry, or at least not enough that he
Speaker 1: noted it. It wasn't like he was reclaiming anything. And
Speaker 1: so if you read the somewhat sanitized version from three M,
Speaker 1: you'll see that they they mainly they mainly emphasized the
Speaker 1: part where uh Drew and co. Sent this tape to
Speaker 1: this company that made bakery products and their response was
Speaker 1: put it on the market. You can now see that
Speaker 1: three M has used this Scotch branding for magnetic tape
Speaker 1: products for audio visual stuff up until the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: and after the nine nineties. Around that time their tapes
Speaker 1: just got branded with the three M logo. And now
Speaker 1: as of three M does not sell magnetic tapes. I
Speaker 1: think they sold off that part of the business, but
Speaker 1: they still have other things. They have Scotch Guard, remember
Speaker 1: Scotch Guard, Scotch Bright, and Scotch Light. I don't remember
Speaker 1: what Scotch light is. Yeah, it's funny again. As a
Speaker 1: as a audio nerd um if you're into like real
Speaker 1: too real recording or like actually recording on tape. There
Speaker 1: are still quite a few companies that make magnetic tape,
Speaker 1: but three M is not one of them. But certainly
Speaker 1: we're early on and like you know, there are folks
Speaker 1: uh in production and an audio production swear by certain
Speaker 1: manufacturers and things like that, which is interesting. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's very it's a very interesting thing to
Speaker 1: get in on the ground floor of because what we're
Speaker 1: talking about essentially is like a company that was around
Speaker 1: long enough to like see a need in in just
Speaker 1: you know, humanity, kind of emerge and fill that need
Speaker 1: and be sort of the first to market, have that
Speaker 1: brand recognition that really just carries on and you can't
Speaker 1: really buy that kind of that kind of brand awareness.
Speaker 1: I have a theory, by the way, about the banjo playing.
Speaker 1: Why they keep mentioning it every time? I think it's
Speaker 1: just like this guy was a little kookie. He was
Speaker 1: outside of the box, you know, he played the banjo
Speaker 1: for crying out loud. I mean, this guy was a
Speaker 1: real maverick. Um. That's my that's my theory. Humanizes him
Speaker 1: a little too, uh so more so than that awesome
Speaker 1: joke I made that we had to cut because we're
Speaker 1: family show. But the there's there's something else here. Um,
Speaker 1: we should talk about what made it so popular, Like
Speaker 1: why why it became so common during the Depression, you know,
Speaker 1: when a lot of people couldn't afford to buy cars,
Speaker 1: much less get them custom painted into a two tone design.
Speaker 1: Scotch tape was used to mend pages of books, sheet music,
Speaker 1: even rips and clothing or window curtains. Bankers, because this
Speaker 1: will give you a sense of how rough things were
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression. Even bankers were using tape if
Speaker 1: paper currency was torn up. You know, this was a
Speaker 1: time where like, if someone needed fifty cents, they might
Speaker 1: just rip a dollar in half and say, like good enough.
Speaker 1: Bankers would tape this stuff back together. Secretaries patched their
Speaker 1: fingernails with it. Farmers. I did not know this when
Speaker 1: farmers could even use it to seal up cracked eggs,
Speaker 1: which doesn't Yeah, that seems weird to me. I wonder
Speaker 1: if the if they just sold the eggs afterwards. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but Goodyear used the tape on its dirigibles,
Speaker 1: which I think speaks for the quality of the product. Well.
Speaker 1: I wonder, maybe are they sealing cracked eggs to keep
Speaker 1: them structurally sound because they're hatching chicks out of them?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean they would have to be
Speaker 1: incubated and all that, and maybe the heat would would
Speaker 1: melt the heat he's ever be a problem, but I certainly.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was a time of austerity, so
Speaker 1: when wee folks were more likely to be willing to
Speaker 1: buy an egg with a piece of scotch tape on it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we think of scotch tape or the This
Speaker 1: type of celli fade tape is mainly being used with
Speaker 1: paper products, you know, um to tape things up on
Speaker 1: bullets and boards perhaps, but also the stuff is can
Speaker 1: be a little insidious, you know, the residue at least
Speaker 1: behind or having to kind of pick off the bits
Speaker 1: of tape that sort of got ripped and sometimes can
Speaker 1: never come off. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean there are
Speaker 1: there are things that you shouldn't apply this adhesive to, right,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody has probably experienced that, even you
Speaker 1: know what, back to the original conversation, even wrapping presents,
Speaker 1: if you're like me and you're not the world's uh
Speaker 1: you're not an Olympic level present rapper, then you know,
Speaker 1: if you try to redo the tape, you can pull
Speaker 1: off some of the decorative surface of of wrapping paper,
Speaker 1: which is why also i've like wrap stuff in pillowcases
Speaker 1: aluminum foil newspaper, like be a little creative with it. Well,
Speaker 1: And there are different strengths of the stuff, right, Like
Speaker 1: we would maybe call pack tape um, which would be
Speaker 1: a stronger cell a cellulose plastic e type, you know,
Speaker 1: material that you can't really just rip with your hands.
Speaker 1: You really you need like a really a sharp blade,
Speaker 1: which on those packing tape kind of dispensers, those can
Speaker 1: be a little bit, uh, a little bit dangerous if
Speaker 1: if wielded without the proper respect. I also do want
Speaker 1: to point out to that the Tartan branding that we
Speaker 1: were talking about, it's not just a little the little
Speaker 1: nubbin that you rip off. It's like on the outside
Speaker 1: of the of the tape to the the you know,
Speaker 1: the little tape dispenser. It's green and black. Actually maybe
Speaker 1: there's uh maybe there's a different color way for it
Speaker 1: on the little thing that you rip off. I've seen
Speaker 1: some a blue and black version of that design. I
Speaker 1: mean also, this is not related to a specific Scottish
Speaker 1: clan either, in case anybody is wondering, But but there
Speaker 1: is which to well just just a dull on that
Speaker 1: you mean, Really, a tartan is almost like a an
Speaker 1: identify her. It's like a certain pattern on a certain
Speaker 1: color scheme that would identify like a family lineage, like
Speaker 1: in Scotland. Yeah, the earliest known tartan can be dated
Speaker 1: to the third or fourth century a d. So it's
Speaker 1: been around for a while. Wasn't their original idea of
Speaker 1: this pattern, but there's something neat and I'd like to
Speaker 1: walk through this. I don't want to defend the pejorative stuff,
Speaker 1: but I do want to point out that from the
Speaker 1: corporate perspective, you can see why they would want to
Speaker 1: lean into this idea of thrifty nous, regardless of how
Speaker 1: problematic everybody in the United States, well virtually everybody, nine
Speaker 1: point eight percent of everybody in the United States had
Speaker 1: to be incredibly thrifty, more so than they have been
Speaker 1: at other points in history. So it made sense. It
Speaker 1: seemed like you were identifying with the common person, at
Speaker 1: least in the boardroom. But those guys hated banjo, don't
Speaker 1: trust them as And here's the inspiring thing. Three M
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression was one of the few companies
Speaker 1: in the world not just in the US, but in
Speaker 1: the entire world that did not layoff employees during this
Speaker 1: time period because they prospered with Scotch tape and they
Speaker 1: took it, they ran with it. You know, they made
Speaker 1: more and more specialized kind of tapes for industrial use
Speaker 1: and for just regular regular folks in their houses. And
Speaker 1: I believe it was World War two when almost all
Speaker 1: of their tape production went straight to the war effort,
Speaker 1: just like automakers started making working for Yeah, or any
Speaker 1: of any number of other giant manufacturing um corporations. I
Speaker 1: think it's so interesting, and it was. It was a
Speaker 1: lot more common people realized, like diverting their production facilities,
Speaker 1: going from making tape to making you know, hand gar names.
Speaker 1: Obviously not that exactly. You have to, you know, have
Speaker 1: the infrastructure in place to make a type of product
Speaker 1: that was close enough to what you were making before.
Speaker 1: So I would imagine maybe they focused more on that
Speaker 1: magnetic tape for communications, perhaps um or you know, other
Speaker 1: types of industrial solvents or things that would be useful
Speaker 1: in the war effort. But like with these auto manufacturing facilities,
Speaker 1: they were literally able to make like not maybe not tanks,
Speaker 1: but like military vehicles exactly. Yeah, and they would go
Speaker 1: on to make over a hundred different types of tape
Speaker 1: to solve specific production problems during the war, even stuff
Speaker 1: down to like how do you label parts correctly and efficiently.
Speaker 1: This is also the time that material shortages forced them
Speaker 1: to switch to synthetic ac relate adhesives. They were running
Speaker 1: out a rubber essentially. I mean during World War Two,
Speaker 1: global supply chains collapsed and this accrelate adhesive wasn't as strong,
Speaker 1: but it had a need advantage. It aged better over time,
Speaker 1: it stayed clear while the rubber based adhesives would turn
Speaker 1: yellow and brittle. And if you've ever seen old tape,
Speaker 1: you know what we're what we're talking about. It it it
Speaker 1: gets kind of cloudy, right, and even cracks kind of right,
Speaker 1: It'll start to like kind of break apart. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: super brittle. And this leads to the creation of Scotch
Speaker 1: Magic Tape. It's the first tape you could ride on
Speaker 1: with a pen, pencil or marker. Yeah, which is cool.
Speaker 1: I guess um, you know you can use it to
Speaker 1: make fun little stickers. I'm not sure what is the
Speaker 1: I mean for labeling. I guess it would be helpful, sure, Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and now Scotch tape is still being made by three M.
Speaker 1: Three M is a multibillion dollar global company, but it
Speaker 1: never forgot how it managed to grow to much ginormous proportions.
Speaker 1: It's due in large part to what they call Scotch
Speaker 1: or magic tape. And right now more than of homes
Speaker 1: in the US have some form of transparent tape. It's
Speaker 1: been all over pop cultures, even on Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 1: and in history is so much closer than we we
Speaker 1: might assume. You know, Drew himself died in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty one, and essentially the entirety
Speaker 1: of his career was spent tinkering on improving these concepts
Speaker 1: and specializing these things. Yep and lo, these many years later,
Speaker 1: the idea has just absolutely become a mainstay of American society.
Speaker 1: Like you said, the company's worth GA jillions. The stuff itself.
Speaker 1: The tape has actually been to the Moon, who was
Speaker 1: used to create an insulation layer for a lunar lander.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of become immortal in pop culture and art,
Speaker 1: just the branding of it. It's like the kind of
Speaker 1: thing Andy Warhol would have, like, you know, painted like
Speaker 1: like Campbell soup cans. I mean, it really is about
Speaker 1: as American as apple pie. That being said, though, we
Speaker 1: do have some parallel kind of production happening over in
Speaker 1: the u K with Cello tape. Yeah, yes, E L
Speaker 1: L O T A p E. Because again, I mean
Speaker 1: sometimes I don't know, it's it's hard to say. Sello
Speaker 1: tape came out in Um the nineteen thirties. The company
Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen the nineteen thirties. So it was
Speaker 1: created nineteen thirty seven by uh, Colin kin a Month
Speaker 1: and George Gray in a suburb of West London called
Speaker 1: actin Um, and it was, you know, not particularly creative branding,
Speaker 1: but they took cell of Fame, which again had been
Speaker 1: hitting you know, hitting uh like Gangbusters, and they replaced
Speaker 1: the sea with an S. So over in the UK,
Speaker 1: they don't use Scotch tape. They use sellotape. And while
Speaker 1: I think Scotch tape was first to market being maybe
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong there, Sello tape was close
Speaker 1: enough that it has its own kind of legacy and
Speaker 1: reputation across the pond. Yeah, yeah, you're correct, because it
Speaker 1: also has become that genericized trademark, people will just call
Speaker 1: anything sellotape and also be much closer to Scotland, you
Speaker 1: can see how uh, they would probably be looking for
Speaker 1: something that didn't immediately insult people if people are insulted there.
Speaker 1: I also want to shout out, you know what, Drew
Speaker 1: made it into the National Inventors Hall of Fame posthumously
Speaker 1: as many do, in two thousand and seven, and he
Speaker 1: never ever forgot the sandpaper that he feels changed his life.
Speaker 1: So maybe we end on this quote from him. Would
Speaker 1: there ever have been any masking or cellophane tape if
Speaker 1: it hadn't been for earlier three M research on adhesive
Speaker 1: binders for abrasive paper, Probably not so good for you. Drew.
Speaker 1: Credit where it's due, but you know, don't be too
Speaker 1: hard on yourself. Man. You taped together the world. He
Speaker 1: didn't say that, that's just and he taught the world
Speaker 1: to sing and play the banjo and play the banjo.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much, so thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Max for advertising Deliverance, which is a great novel uh
Speaker 1: and a harrowing film h And thank you for being
Speaker 1: our super producer. Thanks also to our research associate Jeff Bartlett.
Speaker 1: Speaking of harrowing films, um as want a point out,
Speaker 1: and also Burt Reynolds. UM. I rewatched the movie Boogie
Speaker 1: Nights over this past week. It was the twenty five anniversary,
Speaker 1: and I just want to say, I'm sure this isn't
Speaker 1: This isn't a hot fake. That is an American classic,
Speaker 1: Like every thing about that movie hits and it is
Speaker 1: just it is. Everything is in its right place. There
Speaker 1: is nothing about it that is out of place. Every choice,
Speaker 1: every cinematographic you know, style move, it's just absolutely perfect.
Speaker 1: So kudos to you. Paul thought was entered. He made
Speaker 1: that movie. He was twenty six years old, the jerk. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then Burt Reynolds apparently hated it. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: they managed to uh, they managed to keep it together
Speaker 1: long enough as though they had their relationship mended with
Speaker 1: tape to make to make an amazing film. I want
Speaker 1: to thank also UH our nemesis Jonathan Strickland, Eve's Jeff Coat,
Speaker 1: let's see oh, Alex Williams who composed this slap and
Speaker 1: bop Let's see who else who else? Well, we would
Speaker 1: also like to thank christoprostiotis here in Spirits, UH super
Speaker 1: producer Max Williams. Of course you already said that, but
Speaker 1: I'm saying it again. Ben. Thanks to you, the Dirk
Speaker 1: Diggler to my chest, Rockwell oh Boy or whatever uh
Speaker 1: it might be, And thanks to you, we'll see you
Speaker 1: next time. Books. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.