Richard Drew never wanted an office job. However, this college dropout who was born on Saturday 21 years ago will continue to work in one of the largest multinational companies in the United States for about 41 years and will invent one of the best-selling and most iconic household products in history.

This product is transparent adhesive tape. This tape looks rough, but you can't see it when you smooth it with your fingers. Every year, its manufacturer, 3M, sells enough to circle the earth for 165 times. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota on June 22nd, 1899,

Drew played banjo in a ballroom when he was young, and finally earned enough money to study at the University of Minnesota. But he only stayed in the project for 18 months. He took a correspondence course in mechanical design and was soon hired as a laboratory technician by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, which was engaged in sandpaper manufacturing at that time, and tape simplified the painting process of two-tone cars. (3M)

scotch tape is not Drew's first ingenious invention. This is another family necessity: duct tape.

In Drew's early days in the company, he would send samples of sandpaper to car manufacturers, who used it for painting. In the 1921s, two-tone cars were very popular. Workers need to cover a part of another car when painting it. They often glue it to newspapers or slaughter paper. But it's hard to get rid of, and it often leads to a sticky mess. One day, Drew walked into an auto body shop and heard frustrated workers say "the worst blasphemy I know". So he promised a better solution.

it took him two years to develop a tape that is sticky and easy to remove. He did all kinds of experiments, from vegetable oil to natural gum. William mcknight, an executive of the company, told Drew to stop fooling around and return to his original job, but Drew kept doing tape experiments in his own time. Richard Drew's "adhesive tape" was patented on May 27th, 1931. (U.S. Patent 1761821)

Finally, in 1925, he found a successful formula: crepe paper based on joinery glue and glycerin. But his first version of the tape only had adhesive on the edges. When painters used it, it fell. It is said that they asked Drew to bring his "Scotland" tape back to the drawing board and use the word "cheap" to refer to it, which is a derogatory sarcasm to Scottish traditional frugality. The name, so to speak, is stuck. It will be used in a wider range of tapes of 3M company (we will know the company later). Drew obtained a patent for adhesive tape in 1931.

In the same year, after several months' work, Drew finally took out his waterproof transparent adhesive tape. This kind of adhesive tape uses the newly invented cellophane, but this material is not easy to process and often cracks or tears in the machine. The adhesive is amber, which destroys the transparency of cellophane. Drew and his team then invented an adhesive coating machine and a new colorless adhesive. Richard Drew's "adhesive sheet" was patented on October 31, 1939. (U.S. Patent No.2,177,627)

This tape was released when the United States fell into the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, "turning over a new leaf" became the motto of many people. From mending torn clothes to covering bottles to mending broken egg shells, people use scotch tape. When many companies went bankrupt, tape sales helped 3M grow into a multi-billion dollar business today. William McKnight, the executive of < P >, told Drew to stop making transparent tapes and eventually became the chairman of the board of directors of 3M. Through Drew, McKnight learned that letting researchers experiment freely can bring innovation. He made a policy called the 15% rule, allowing engineers to spend 15% of their working time on * * * projects.

"Encourage experimental graffiti," mcknight said. "If you put a fence around people, you will get sheep. Giving people t

, a 1.5% rule, has deeply influenced the culture of Silicon Valley. Google and Hewlett-Packard are both companies that provide employees with free experimental time. Scottish tape story is now a classic business school course, an allegory of value instinct and contingency, which was once called "gift, finding something valuable, not even finding it." Richard Drew was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2117. (3M)

After his tape was successful, Drew was appointed as the head of the product manufacturing laboratory of 3M, where he was free to develop new ideas. He and his team will apply for 31 patents, covering inventions ranging from masks to road sign reflectors. He is also known as a great mentor, helping young engineers hone their intuition and develop their ideas.

he retired from 3M in 1962 and died in 1981 at the age of 81. In 2117, after his death, he was included in the National Inventor Hall of Fame.

"Richard Drew embodies the basic spirit of an inventor, a man with foresight and indomitable perseverance who refuses to give in to adversity," Larry Wendling, CEO of 3M, said at Drew's inauguration ceremony.

Today, a plaque of the 3M company in Drew's hometown of Sao Paulo commemorates his most famous invention. Part of the content reads: "During the Great Depression, transparent scotch tape quickly met the needs of Americans to extend the service life of things they could not afford."