Richard Gurley Drew (June 22, 1899 – December 14, 1980) was an American inventor who worked for

Johnson and Johnson Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is an American multinational corporation founded in 1886 that develops medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and consumer packaged goods. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company i ...

, Permacel Co., and 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he invented

masking tape Masking tape, also known as painter's tape, is a type of pressure-sensitive tape made of a thin and easy-to-tear paper, and an easily released pressure-sensitive adhesive. It is available in a variety of widths. It is used mainly in painting, to ...

and

cellophane Cellophane is a thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose. Its low permeability to air, oils, greases, bacteria, and liquid water makes it useful for food packaging. Cellophane is highly permeable to water vapour, but may be coated w ...

tape.

Biography

When Drew joined 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1921, it was a modest manufacturer of

sandpaper upright=1.35, Sheets of sandpaper with different grit sizes (40 (coarse), 80, 150, 240, 600 (fine)). Sandpaper and glasspaper are names used for a type of coated abrasive that consists of sheets of paper or cloth with abrasive material glued to ...

. While testing their new Wetordry sandpaper at auto shops, Drew was intrigued to learn that the two-tone auto paintjobs so popular in the

Roaring Twenties The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the U ...

were difficult to manage at the border between the two colors. In response, after two years of work in 3M's labs, Drew invented the first

(1925), a two-inch-wide tan paper strip backed with a light,

pressure-sensitive adhesive Pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA, self-adhesive, self-stick adhesive) is a type of nonreactive adhesive which forms a bond when pressure is applied to bond the adhesive with a surface. No solvent, water, or heat is needed to activate the adhesive ...

. The first tape had adhesive along its edges but not in the middle. In its first trial run, it fell off the car and the frustrated auto painter growled at Drew, "take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it!" (By "Scotch," he meant "cheap".) The nickname stuck, both to Drew's improved masking tape, and to his 1930 invention, Scotch Brand cellulose tape. In 1930 he came up with the world's first transparent cellophane adhesive tape (called ''

sellotape Sellotape () is a British brand of transparent, polypropylene-based, pressure-sensitive tape, and is the leading brand in the United Kingdom. Sellotape is generally used for joining, sealing, attaching and mending. In much the same way that Sc ...

'' in the UK and ''Scotch tape'' in the United States). During the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, people began using Scotch tape to repair items rather than replace them. This was the beginning of 3M’s diversification into all manner of marketplaces and helped them to flourish in spite of the

. Drew died in 1980 in

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coas ...

References

External links

Live Science
1899 births 1980 deaths 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors 3M people {{US-inventor-stub, Drew, Richard