A crafts forum. CraftBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » CraftBanter forum » Craft related newsgroups » General Crafting
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Duct tape by Michael Quinion



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old November 7th 05, 01:53 AM
Mike
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Duct tape by Michael Quinion

DUCT TAPE by --Michael Quinion

[Q] "Is that universal sticky tape stuff that everyone has in their
garage toolkit called duct tape or duck tape? I've seen and heard it
both ways." [A] It's possible to make a case that either is right. The
story behind the stuff is confusing enough to require some sorting out.
Bear with me while I trace the evidence and the contrary opinions,
though I must warn you that I come only to a tentative conclusion. The
first example of duct tape I've found is from an advertisement in a
newspaper in Wisconsin in September 1965. There are lots of earlier
examples of duck tape in the same archive that date back to the early
1940s (and the
Oxford English Dictionary has found one from 1902), which might suggest
that it's the older form. But that's misleading. This duck tape isn't
the triple-layer, tearable, silver, sticky-backed stuff but plain
cotton tape. The material has been called duck for four centuries,
though it was originally made from linen, not cotton. It was a lighter
and finer material
than canvas, often used for seamen's trousers and sometimes for sails
on small craft. Duck tape was widely used at one time for the vertical
binding tapes of venetian blinds. There's nothing in any records of
usage in historic databases or in the entries for both terms in the
Oxford English Dictionary that suggests what the original name of the
adhesive-backed material might have been. From here on I can do no more
than relay and comment on accounts that have appeared on various Web
pages and in a column by William Safire in the New York Times in March
2003. All tell the same story (so much so that they arouse unworthy
suspicions). The tale is plausible, though I can't prove it and there
are some worrying loose ends. The original material was developed, it
is said, by the Permacel division of Johnson & Johnson in 1942 for the
US Army as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition boxes. The tape
proved immensely versatile and was used for all sorts of repair
purposes on military equipment. These facts come from Johnson &
Johnson's historians, so ought to be accurate. But the story goes on to
say that because the fabric backing was made from cotton duck and
perhaps because it repelled moisture "like water off a duck's back", it

became known to soldiers as duck tape. However, there's no known use of
duck tape in any document of the Second World War that anyone
investigating the matter has looked at. A column by Jan Freeman in the
Boston Globe in March 2003, partly in response to Safire's, implies
that the story about the name duck tape might have been a folk
etymology passed on in good faith by employees of Johnson & Johnson.
Otherwise, we have no information about what Permacel, or the US Army,
called the material. Some time after the War, it is said, engineers
begin to use the tape to seal the joints in air-conditioning ducts.
This tape was manufactured in the same way, though to match the ducting
it was colored silver rather than the green of the Army version.
Because of this use, it became known informally as duct tape. Duck tape
is a trademark of Henkel Consumer Adhesives, dating from 1982, who sell
it under that name in several countries. John Kahl, the CEO of the
firm, was reported by Jan Freeman in the same article as saying that
his father chose the name after noticing that duct tape sounded like
duck tape when customers asked for it. (The collision of the two t's in
the middle of duct tape causes the first one to be lost by a process
called elision.) The term duct tape has never been trademarked, though
several compound terms that include it have-it looks as though it had
become generic before anybody thought of registering it. Apart from a
one-off instance in the Oxford English Dictionary of duck tape from
1971 (which looks like a case of the duct-duck elision), I can't find
duck tape in the adhesive sense until the 1980s. My view is that the
original name was duct tape, given informally to it by heating
engineers post-war, and that the duck tape version is elision in rapid
speech, later capitalized on by a manufacturer. But, as things stand,
nobody knows for sure. As etymological asides, the tape has also been
called ninety-mile-an-hour tape or hundred-mile-an-hour tape (because,
it is said, you could drive a vehicle repaired with the stuff at those
sorts of speeds without problems). A closely similar material used on
television and film sets is called gaffer tape. This gets its name from
the chief electrician, the gaffer, because one of its main uses is to
hold cables in place, though it has many others. (In general, a gaffer
is the boss of a crew, a foreman or similar person, a name which
derives from an English term of respect for an old man that's most
likely a contraction of godfather.) The term gaffer tape is of similar
age to duct tape, being first recorded in the 1970s.

Ads
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Snap tape Karen Maslowski Sewing 49 October 3rd 04 01:58 PM
Bias tape frood Quilting 14 July 8th 04 05:41 PM
New Michael Miller, Moda at The Virginia Quilter! The Virginia Quilter Marketplace 0 February 28th 04 01:16 AM
Duct Tape Double almost here duh who Sewing 10 October 24th 03 12:37 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 06:13 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 CraftBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.