Re:Watching Paint Dry: The unexpectedly interesting story of...
by ZeroGravitas on Tuesday May 23, 2023 @01:22PM
(#36047587)
Masking tape being a notable example:
> By the early 1920s, two-toned cars were the rage, and that created a major headache for the automotive industry. To craft this duo-tone look, one portion of the car had to be masked off while the other was painted. The problem was nobody knew how to do this well. So automakers and auto body shops improvised. They glued old newspapers to the body and windows with library pastes, homemade glues or surgical adhesive tape. 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.
> At the time, 3M primarily manufactured sandpaper and other abrasives. One of Dick Drew's jobs was taking samples of waterproof sandpaper (another 3M invention) to nearby auto body shops for testing. 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. Drew had seen this occur on many other visits, but this time he spoke up. He could, he said, produce a tape that would end the painter's torment.
> By the early 1920s, two-toned cars were the rage, and that created a major headache for the automotive industry. To craft this duo-tone look, one portion of the car had to be masked off while the other was painted. The problem was nobody knew how to do this well. So automakers and auto body shops improvised. They glued old newspapers to the body and windows with library pastes, homemade glues or surgical adhesive tape. 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.
> At the time, 3M primarily manufactured sandpaper and other abrasives. One of Dick Drew's jobs was taking samples of waterproof sandpaper (another 3M invention) to nearby auto body shops for testing. 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. Drew had seen this occur on many other visits, but this time he spoke up. He could, he said, produce a tape that would end the painter's torment.