Scotch® Tapes & Adhesives – 3M

The Scotch brand and Scotch Tape are registered trademarks of 3M. Besides using Scotch as a prefix in its brand names (Scotchgard, Scotchlite, and Scotch-Brite), the company also used the Scotch name for its (mainly professional) audiovisual magnetic tape products, until the early 1990s when the tapes were branded solely with the 3M logo.

Scotch Tape is a brand name used for certain pressure-sensitive tapes manufactured by 3M as part of the company’s Scotch brand.

Since 1925 3M has been experimenting, innovating, and inventing solutions to everyday problems, but it all started with tape. Whether you’re mounting, moving, mending, storing or decorating, 3M ’ve got a tape uniquely designed to help you stick two and two together.
It’s been used for everything from wrapping gifts to protecting blimps. It is so commonplace that it is easy to take for granted. Yet Scotch® Transparent Tape has an extraordinary history marked with audacity, serendipity, and “stick-to-itiveness.” For a time in its early development, the very idea of transparent tape seemed ludicrous as each day stacks of spoiled cellophane piled up several feet high on a laboratory floor. Yet driven by what was to become a corporate credo—”Thou shalt not kill a new product idea”—Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) engineers persisted and ultimately triumphed, creating what was to become one of the most ubiquitous and successful products ever developed.

How Adhesive Tape Is Made

All pressure-sensitive tapes share two common, but deceptively simple, traits: They all have some sort of adhesive attached to a backing. Yet to make this dynamic duo work requires as many as 30 raw materials and a bit of complex chemistry.

Using Scotch® Magic™ Tape, a later version of the product, as an example, producing the adhesive polymer starts with a mixture of alcohols and acids. Certain portions of distillate from crude oil are chemically reacted to form the desired raw materials. These materials are combined in water or a hydrocarbon solvent in carefully controlled proportions and are polymerized to form the final adhesive product.

As for the cellulose acetate backing, its manufacture begins with wood pulp or cotton linters. These cellulose fibers are broken down by chemical and physical means to their basic fiber structure. A plasticizer is added to the cellulose acetate, which is then formed into sheets of film. Finally, the surface of the film is treated to give it a matte finish. The finished film is wound up in large rolls, ready to be coated with adhesive.

Scotch® Tape Timeline

1921: Sandpaper manufacturer 3M hires Richard Drew as lab assistant.

1925: Drew invents Scotch® Masking Tape, the predecessor to transparent tape. This marks 3M’s entry into the tape business. The first tape was a two-inch-wide tan paper strip backed with a light, pressure-sensitive adhesive.

1930: Drew develops the first waterproof, clear adhesive tape: Scotch® Cellulose Tape, later renamed Scotch® Transparent Tape.

1932: 3M’s John Borden designs the first heavy-duty tape dispenser with a built-in cutter blade.

1945: After World War II, 3M resumes shipments of tapes for civilian use. More than 100 different types of Scotch tapes had been developed to meet wartime requirements. The famous plaid design is introduced to Scotch tape packages.

1961: Scotch® Magic™ Tape is launched. More than just transparent, the matte finish tape is virtually invisible on light-colored paper and can be written on with pen, pencil, or marker.

1978: Emerging comedy TV show, Saturday Night Live, pokes fun at the popularity of Scotch® tape. In a skit called “Scotch Boutique,” the owners of a new store sell nothing but Scotch® tape, demonstrating the countless and endlessly quirky uses of this iconic product.

1985-86: In a national Roper opinion poll, Scotch® tape is voted the most indispensable product in the home. Scotch® tape is also honored by a leading consumer magazine as one of the “50 small wonders and big deals that revolutionized the lives of consumers.”

1997: 3M introduces Scotch® Pop-Up Tape Strips—precut, 2-inch tape pieces and a one-hand, pop-up dispensing.

2004: Scotch® tape is named a “Humble Masterpiece” by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit features more than 100 simple items, including Scotch tape, that are described as “masterpieces of design deserving our admiration.”

2007: Richard Drew inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Scotch® Transparent Tape recognized as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.