One morning in 1923 he walked into one of these shops and overheard "choicest profanity I'd ever known." Yet another paint job was botched and the worker who'd done it was furious. One of Dick Drew's jobs was taking samples of waterproof sandpaper (another 3M invention) to nearby auto body shops for testing. This helped create a sharp demarcation between the two colors, but the adhesives stuck so firmly that trying to remove them often ruined the paint job.Īt the time, 3M primarily manufactured sandpaper and other abrasives. They glued old newspapers to the body and windows with library pastes, homemade glues or surgical adhesive tape. So automakers and auto body shops improvised. The problem was nobody knew how to do this well. To craft this duo-tone look, one portion of the car had to be masked off while the other was painted. And his ingenious solution-masking tape-would revolutionize 3M and set the stage for eventual development of Scotch ® Transparent Tape.īy the early 1920s, two-toned cars were the rage, and that created a major headache for the automotive industry. Drew, a 23-year-old 3M research assistant, was a big one. Producing the first roll of Scotch ® Tape wasn't just a challenge, it was something of a marvel considering that it was the brainchild of a banjo-playing, engineering school dropout who had a limited background in chemistry and who had no idea what he was getting into when he told a client he could solve his problem. Richard Drew Solves the Painter’s Problem
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