When Richard G. Drew first began work at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) in the early 1920's, the company's major product was sandpaper. As part of product testing 3M's Wetordry sandpaper, Drew visited a local body shop, which needed sandpaper to prepare metal surfaces prior to painting.

Drew noticed the problems that the painters were having with the popular two-tone paint jobs. They were using a gummed tape to make the sharp edge between the colors, and when they removed the tape, some of the paint came with it. Drew was inspired to develop a tape that would meet the demands of the auto body industry.

3M already had some of the technology in place to produce a masking tape that would do the job because the sandpaper it manufactured required an adhesive compound to attach the "sand" to the "paper." Drew designed a sample masking tape and took it to the auto body painters for testing. To make the two-inch-wide tape more affordable, he applied adhesive only to the edges. When a car painter used the test tape, it fell off and, as the story goes, the painter told Drew to return the tape to his "Scotch bosses." The name "Scotch" was memorialized when Drew later designed the first line of successful transparent adhesive tape that he called Scotch tape. Today, even the tape dispensers are clad in plaid (suggesting a kilt).

The first tape that Drew invented was the result of two years' effort experimenting with vegetable oils, various resins, linseed, and glue glycerin. The final version was made in 1925 from cabinetmaker's glue; the tape was kept sticky with glycerin and used crepe paper for backing. This new Scotch Brand Masking Tape stuck to the car body but came off without pulling the paint with it.

Drew's invention set the stage for further development of a wide variety of tapes, all under the Scotch trademark. The one most widely known to the public was invented in 1930 under the name Scotch Brand Cellulose Tape. The name was later changed to the now famous Scotch Brand Transparent Tape. The impetus for the transparent tape came in 1929, when the Flaxlinum Company, a St. Paul insulation firm, was contracted to insulate railroad refrigeration cars. The company needed a moisture-proof tape with which to wrap the insulation bats. The Scotch Brand Masking Tape did not work, however. By the time Drew and his assistants solved the problem a year later, the Flaxlinum Company was no longer interested, but there were many other potential customers such as bakers, meatpackers, and grocers. Pressure-sensitive tape soon became a ubiquitous feature of the manufacturing world.

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