PAGE 10 • GO! MAGAZINE
COVER STORY
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2021 • THE BULLETIN
THE LONG AND STICKY
STORY OF DUCT TAPE
BY DAVID JASPER • The Bulletin
W
hile this reporter is fond of just about all of the themes we at GO! Magazine have drummed up over the past year, “Holding it together” is special
because any literal interpretation of that phrase must include duct tape. Duct tape is magical, a day-saver, as handy a tool for on-the-spot repairs
when some manmade part fails, as things made by man tend to do eventually. As many a wiser person than I have observed, if duct tape can’t fix
something — at least long enough until proper repairs can be made — it’s probably time to throw that thing away.
Leonid Tit/123RF
A piece titled “Comedian,” which was quite similar to this clip-art banana duct-taped to a white wall, fetched $120,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach a couple of years ago, which made people go bananas.
Long before its use expanded into arts
and crafts, duct tape was an idea from the
mind of Vesta Stoudt, an ordnance plant
worker during World War II, according to
Kilmer House, a blog of Johnson & Johnson,
which first manufactured the tape.
During the war, Stoudt, a mother with two
sons then in the Navy, worked in an ordnance
plant, where she had the extraordinary idea
to make a durable, waterproof tape for seal-
ing boxes of cartridges for rifle grenades.
“The cartridges were packed eleven to a
box, and the boxes were taped and waxed
to make them waterproof and damp-proof.
The box flaps were sealed with thin paper
tape, and a tab of tape was left loose so that
it could be pulled to release the waterproof
wax coating and open the box. The prob-
lem was that the thin paper tape wasn’t
strong enough, and the tabs frequently tore
off when soldiers pulled on them to open
the ammo boxes, leaving them frantically
scrambling to claw the boxes open while un-
der enemy fire.
Lives were at risk — including the lives
of her sons. So Vesta Stoudt came up with a
solution: seal the boxes with a strong, cloth-
based waterproof tape instead of the thin
paper tape.”
That only problem was that Stoudt
couldn’t get much traction with her bosses
down at the ol’ ordnance plant, so she did
what any enterprising mother might have:
She wrote to President Franklin D. Roos-
evelt in 1943, where she had considerably
more success.
Eventually, Stoudt’s letter made it up the
chain of the War Production Board, and
Johnson & Johnson was tapped to make the
first iteration, which was green, not gray,
and known as “Duck Tape” (not to be con-
fused with the brand), possibly for its water-
proof nature and the fact that it was made
with cotton duck fabric.
According to Karl Kruszelnicki, no one’s
really sure about the reason for the name,
but no matter what it was called, its utility
was readily apparent, evident in the nick-
names it picked up:
“In the racing car business, it is called
‘100 mile-per-hour tape’ and ‘200 mile-per-
hour tape,’ because it will stay on cars at that
speed. Airforce technicians call it ‘1,000
mile-per-hour’ tape, because it will stick to
the radome (radar domes) of jet fighters at
that phenomenal speed,” the doctor wrote.
“The very first use of the phrase ‘duct tape’
… seems to be in 1970, when the bankrupt
Larry Plotnik Company of Chelsea,
Massachusetts, unloaded 14,000 rolls of the
stuff.”
Whatever you call it, duct tape’s versa-
tility may be unrivaled. Besides holding
what would otherwise be junk together, it
has been drafted into service for all man-
ner of things, including wart removal,
high-price artwork and saving space mis-
sions.
And we owe it to Vesta Stoudt, a mom
whose own stick-to-it attitude changed the
world.
e e
David Jasper: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com