Scotch Tape is a brand name used for certain pressure sensitive tapes manufactured by 3M as part of the company's Scotch brand.
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The precursor to the current tapes was developed in the 1930s in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Richard Drew to seal a then-new transparent material known as cellophane.[1]
Although it is a trademarked brand name, it has sometimes been used in the United States and elsewhere as a generic term for transparent adhesive tape. The Scotch brand includes many different constructions (backings, adhesives, etc.) and colors of tape.
Use of the term "Scotch" in the name has a pejorative origin. A customer complained that 3M was manufacturing its masking tape too cheaply, and told company engineer Richard Drew to, "take this tape back to your stingy Scotch bosses and tell them to put more adhesive on it."[2]
Scotty McTape, a kilt-wearing cartoon boy, was the brand's mascot for two decades, first appearing in 1944.[3] The familiar plaid design, a take on the Wallace tartan, was introduced in 1945.[3]
The Scotch brand and Scotch Tape are registered trademarks of 3M. Besides using "Scotch" as a prefix in its brand names (Scotchgard and Scotchlite), the company also used the name "Scotch" for its (mainly professional) audiovisual magnetic tape products,[4] until the early 1990s when the tapes were branded solely with the 3M logo. In 1996 3M exited the magnetic tape business, selling its assets to Quantegy (which is a spin-off of Ampex).
In 1953, Russian scientists showed that triboluminescence caused by peeling a roll of an unidentified Scotch brand tape in a vacuum can produce X-rays [5]. In 2008, American scientists performed an experiment that showed the rays can be strong enough to leave an X-ray image of a finger on photographic paper[6].