scotch tape.

Scotch tape has become a genericized trademark, which is the fancy way of saying that everyone uses one particular brand name to describe a product as a whole. For example, it's much more common to hear "Hand me a Kleenex" than "Hand me a Kleenex brand tissue."

Scotch tape is made by 3M, formerly the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. I kinda like the old name, considering the company is most famous for tape and Post-its (at least those are the products I use).

I know what you're thinking. Wow, Sandra, that's not particularly interesting, is it now? Bit hard up for blog material, are we? Couldn't you have had a big fight with your boyfriend or maybe moved to Easter Island to drum up something interesting to talk about? Have you no commitment to your readership? I'd even put up with another entry about your mid-twenties crisis, but the history of 3M? Seriously?

No, I'm not really writing about the history of 3M. I'm going to talk about the history of Scotch tape.

Now, I got this information from less-than-reliable sources, namely a couple of coworkers and a Wikipedia article.

Long ago (1930) and far away (Minnesota), a guy invented Scotch tape by putting sticky stuff on the amazing new technology known as cellophane. It was brilliant in a why-didn't-I-think-of-that sort of way. 3M started selling it, but only put the adhesive around the edges to make production a bit less expensive. This corner cutting resulted in less stickiness, and the people realized that 3M was just being cheap. In case you weren't around then, you might not know that people of Scottish descent were stereotyped as being stingy, so the new adhesive was called "Scotch tape." The name, ahem, stuck. 3M ended up adding more of the sticky stuff and kept the name.

I can't find any record of this story on the 3M website, but it's not something they'd want to spread around. So, Scotch tape is actually a slur. Somehow, I don't think Jew tape would have been as successful.