Few everyday objects are simpler than Scotch tape. Yet someone had to invent it. That someone was Dick Drew, a researcher at 3M in Minnesota. He had worked extensively with adhesives in the 1920s, coming up with the first masking tape. When he was asked to design a waterproof covering for a customer's product, Drew experimented with cellophane coated with adhesive. It didn't work. But he continued fiddling, putting a primer on the cellophane to strengthen it, and soon he had a new tape, the first roll of which was sent to a prospective customer in 1930. Today, hundreds of varieties of tape have home, medical, construction, electrical, and other uses.