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Engineers Find Solutions that Stick New York—Try to imagine your desk without a tape dispenser and stack of Post-It® Notes at the ready, wrapping those holiday presents without transparent Scotch® tape, or even painting your walls and ceilings without the straight edge that masking tape affords. Hard to do, right? These items, found in virtually every American office and home and which many people regard as indispensable, were invented by engineers and changed forever the way the world looks at adhesives. As National Engineers Week approaches, it’s a good time to celebrate the achievements of engineers who hold our world together, in more ways than one. An Industry Born Out of a Two-Tone Tantrum In 1921, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, known as 3M, hired a new lab assistant, Richard Drew, who had only one year of engineering training at the University of Minnesota and had been playing the banjo to finance his way through an engineering correspondence course. Drew was ultimately responsible for three of 3M’s best-selling products: masking tape, cellophane tape, and its successor, Magic Tape. At that time, 3M was a struggling sandpaper manufacturer. In 1923, 3M developed the first waterproof sandpaper. Drew was asked to take trial batches of the new stuff to a local auto body shop for testing. Two-tone paint finishes on cars had just been introduced and were an instant sensation. Too late, however, the auto manufacturers discovered that they had created a huge problem for themselves. They had no effective way to keep one color masked from the other during spray-painting. That day in the auto body shop, Drew watched as a painter removed gummed Kraft paper from a brand new Packard, stripping the paint away with it. The painter, disgusted with the mess the primitive masking method made of his new paint job, spewed profanities in Drew’s direction. Drew vowed to the furious painter right then and there that he would develop a tape to make two-tone paint application easy. By coincidence, 3M management was searching for a way to diversify the company’s product line. They gave Drew the time and financial backing to conduct some experiments on a masking tape that would stick tightly, yet pull off cleanly without leaving residue or taking the paint with it; a tape that wouldn’t let solvents in lacquer seep through and ruin the paint job underneath; a tape strong enough to provide a sharp edge for two tones. Drew and his assistants cooked up dozens of batches of sticky substances using linseed oil, various resins, gum chicle, and naphtha. The laboratory finally ended up with a formula containing a good grade of cabinetmaker’s glue that was kept sticky with the addition of glycerin. For the tape base, he settled on some left-over treated crepe paper. The young engineer’s promise took two years of work to bring to completion. In 1925, 3M’s chief chemist brought samples of the new tape to the auto makers in Detroit. They immediately placed an order for three carloads. This first tape was called 3M Non-Drying Tape, later known as Scotch masking tape. Yearly volume grew steadily from about $164,000 its first full year on the market to more than $1 million in 1935, and on up to a multimillion-dollar gross, where it remained...and 3M was in the tape business. Becoming the Clear Leader Five years later, in 1930, Drew conceived the product that would bring 3M worldwide fame—transparent tape. Like masking tape, this invention was inspired by customer need. An insulation company needed to insulate hundreds of refrigerated railroad cars. The problem was that the insulation had to be protected from moisture. It could be wrapped in waterproof material, but the wrap would need a waterproof seal. The company consulted 3M, and Richard Drew—who was now resident pressure-adhesives expert—began the challenge of inventing a waterproof tape. While he was experimenting with new tape formulas, Dupont developed a moisture proof packaging material called cellophane, which was an immediate hit with food distributors. When Drew saw the filmy, transparent material, he thought it the perfect material on which to base his new tape. All he had to do was coat the material with adhesive since it already was waterproof. This turned out to be harder than he thought. It took another year for him to iron out all the problems with applying an adhesive to cellophane tape. It seems that cellophane curled near heat, split when coated by machine and didn’t take adhesive smoothly. Every day a truck carted away heaps of ruined cellophane. Slowly, however, the 3M researchers solved the product’s problems. They discovered that by applying a primer coat to the cellophane, the adhesive would hold evenly. They designed new coating machinery that kept the cellophane from splitting. And, they developed a new colorless adhesive to preserve the transparency of the cellophane. Soon after the tape’s introduction, though, another company invented a process to heat-seal cellophane and Scotch Cellulose Tape immediately became obsolete in the market for which it had been designed. While this might have killed a lesser product, many food distributors and other retailers clamored for the product since they continued to seal their packages with tape. But, it was when consumers discovered the waterproof, transparent tape that sales really took off. The Depression should have been a terrible time to introduce a new product, since it forced people to save money and do without new purchases. Scotch cellulose tape, however, was the perfect answer to Americans’ need to make do by prolonging the usefulness of old things. Homemakers used it to seal opened cans of milk, label home-canned food, mend torn books, and fix broken toys. Office workers used it to repair torn paperwork, bank tellers fixed torn currency, and secretaries mended torn fingernails. Consumers found hundreds of uses for the new tape. Over the years, 3M has improved the tape, making it easier to use. After 18 months of experimenting, John Borden, product sales manager, designed an efficient dispenser with a serrated knife and a metal strip to keep the new tape edge handy. In 1961, 3M engineers perfected the tape so that it would not yellow or ooze adhesive. Appearing frosty on the roll but invisible on the page, the improved tape was given a new name—Scotch brand Magic tape. Today it’s the world’s best-selling tape. A Little Yellow Note with Hundreds of Uses Chemical engineer Art Fry didn’t invent the special adhesive, and he didn’t invent the paper. But he did put them together in 1980 to come up with the best thing to happen to notes in years. His Post-it® Notes—the self-sticking notes that can be removed without a trace—are now marketed around the world. Fry’s inspiration for the self-sticking notes dates back to when he sang in his church choir in the early 1970s. He used scraps of paper to mark selections in his hymnal, but they kept falling out. "I needed a bookmark that would stay put, yet could easily be removed without damaging my hymnal," Fry said. At that time, Fry’s colleague, Dr. Spencer Silver, an organic chemist, was doing basic research on adhesives in 3M’s Central Research Department. Silver had created a low-tack adhesive that stuck lightly to many surfaces, yet remained sticky even after you repositioned it. Fry realized Silver’s adhesive was perfect for his needs. One morning, Fry applied some of the adhesive to the edge of a piece of paper. His thought was to make a bookmark. After having made the bookmark, he discovered that it was a great self-attaching note. A short time later, Fry realized his invention’s full potential, when he wrote a note on one of his new "bookmarks" and attached it to a report he was forwarding to a colleague. "That’s when I came to the very exciting realization that my sticky bookmark was actually a new way to communicate and organize information," Fry said. Indeed, soon co-workers were at Fry’s desk demanding more samples of his invention. Fry took advantage of 3M’s "15 percent rule," which allows scientists to spend up to 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choosing, and the Post-It Note was born. Introduced in the United States in 1980 and in Europe in 1981, demand for the notes grew quickly. One year after its introduction, Post-it Notes were named 3M’s Outstanding New Product. Today, Post-it Notes are one of the five top-selling office products in the United States, and are best-sellers worldwide. And, there are now more than 400 different Post-it® products available in 30 different colors, 56 shapes, and 27 sizes. Fry grew up in a small Iowa town, and dreamed of becoming a chemical engineer, like his father. Beginning with 3M part-time in 1953 while still a University of Minnesota chemical engineering student, Fry’s career was devoted almost entirely to new product development—using leading-edge materials and technologies generated by 3M research to create products to solve customer problems, and to build businesses around them. He was promoted to division scientist in 1984 and, in 1986, to corporate scientist, 3M’s top technical title, which he retained until his recent retirement from full-time work. Fry has come back as a part-time consultant to help out young people. "I still have a lot of ideas," he said, "but instead of having to do everything myself these days, I play the grandfather role...you know when you play with the grandkids and give them back to their parents. I give project ideas to young people and they generally wind up making something better of it than I had even imagined." In encouraging young researchers, Fry makes it a point to explain that: "The best idea in the world that stays in your own mind will do no good. (You must) convince other people all the time that your idea is worth patenting, that it is worth financing, that it is worth making, and that it is worth using. Innovation is not easy but boy it is a lot of fun!" 3M has a history of encouraging innovation among its employees and potential future employees. The company is a corporate affiliate of National Engineers Week, and, in 1996, 3M Chairman and CEO L.D. DeSimone served as honorary chair of the yearly celebration. # # # [_private/boilerplate.html]
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National Engineers Week Foundation
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