Freds Dad
Veteran
- Location
- Gawsworth.
It will probably be one of the stupid challenges they do where Clarkson once again wins.
I can't stand the man.
I can't stand the man.
Troll Alert!
- Thread starter Recycle
- Start date
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Haitch
Flim Flormally
- Location
- Netherlands
746 words and still no answer, happy reading:
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 duck tape is known earlier — the Oxford English Dictionary has an example of that term from 1902 — it’s a different material. That duck tape isn’t the triple-layer, silver-coloured, sticky-backed stuff but plain cotton tape. The woven fabric has been called duck for four centuries, though it was originally made from linen, not cotton (its name is from from Dutch doek, linen or linen cloth). 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.
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 about the origin of duct tape (so much so that they probably derive from a common source). The story is that the original material was developed by the Permacel division of Johnson & Johnson in 1942 as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition boxes in the US Army. The story says that because the fabric backing was made from cotton duck and because it repelled moisture “like water off a duck’s back”, it became known to soldiers as duck tape.
Recent research by Gary Kiecker, a former marketing director for Scotch tapes at 3M Company, shows that the story of its origin is untrue. The tapes used by the US Army during the war for sealing ammunition cases and other uses were off-the-shelf brands, including Johnson & Johnson’s Jonflex and Utilitape. The latter was a moisture-proof cloth tape introduced in 1933.
Despite being widely held, the story about these wartime materials being called duck tape is also entirely false: no mention of them is known in any document of the wartime period that anyone investigating the matter has looked at. The story might have grown up because there are a few examples of duck tape appearing in contemporary documents that specify construction methods. This was actually the older cotton tape, usually painted over to preserve it.
After the war, J&J sold their tape for sealing joints in air-conditioning ducts. To match the ducting it was coloured silver. We may guess that it became known informally among heating engineers as duct tape, though the term didn't appear in print at the time. In the late 1950s, a new product was introduced with a third layer of waterproof polyethylene film. This is the product that in various qualities we know today as duct tape. The first unequivocal reference I can find to a tape that sounds like the modern material is this announcement in a trade journal:
DUCT TAPE
Duro-Dyne Corp.
Farmingdale, N.Y.
A new duct tape for sealing ductwork and insulation on heating and air conditioning installations is available in this firm's aluminum cloth series (high count, high strength cloth) and in its aluminum reinforced fiber series.
Heating and Air Conditioning Contractor, Volume 49, 1957.
The term duct tape has never been trademarked, though several compound terms that include it have — it seems that it had become generic before anybody thought of registering it.
Your other term, duck tape, has a different history. Apart from a one-off instance in the Oxford English Dictionary of duck tape from 1971 (which looks like a case of what’s called elision — the collision of the two ts in the middle of duct tape causes the first one to be lost.), I can’t find duck tape in the adhesive sense until the 1980s. It was a trademark of Henkel Consumer Adhesives (now owned by ShurTech Brands), dating from 1982, who sold it under that name in several countries. John Kahl, the CEO of Henkel, was reported by Jan Freeman in the Boston Globe in March 2003 as saying that his father chose the name after noticing that duct tape sounded like duck tape when his customers asked for it.
To summarise. As names for the self-adhesive tape, duct tape came first, given informally to a material used by heating engineers after the Second World War and later transferred to a more sophisticated version, and the duck tape version is elision in rapid speech, capitalised on by a manufacturer long after the duct tape name became commonplace.
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 duck tape is known earlier — the Oxford English Dictionary has an example of that term from 1902 — it’s a different material. That duck tape isn’t the triple-layer, silver-coloured, sticky-backed stuff but plain cotton tape. The woven fabric has been called duck for four centuries, though it was originally made from linen, not cotton (its name is from from Dutch doek, linen or linen cloth). 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.
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 about the origin of duct tape (so much so that they probably derive from a common source). The story is that the original material was developed by the Permacel division of Johnson & Johnson in 1942 as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition boxes in the US Army. The story says that because the fabric backing was made from cotton duck and because it repelled moisture “like water off a duck’s back”, it became known to soldiers as duck tape.
Recent research by Gary Kiecker, a former marketing director for Scotch tapes at 3M Company, shows that the story of its origin is untrue. The tapes used by the US Army during the war for sealing ammunition cases and other uses were off-the-shelf brands, including Johnson & Johnson’s Jonflex and Utilitape. The latter was a moisture-proof cloth tape introduced in 1933.
Despite being widely held, the story about these wartime materials being called duck tape is also entirely false: no mention of them is known in any document of the wartime period that anyone investigating the matter has looked at. The story might have grown up because there are a few examples of duck tape appearing in contemporary documents that specify construction methods. This was actually the older cotton tape, usually painted over to preserve it.
After the war, J&J sold their tape for sealing joints in air-conditioning ducts. To match the ducting it was coloured silver. We may guess that it became known informally among heating engineers as duct tape, though the term didn't appear in print at the time. In the late 1950s, a new product was introduced with a third layer of waterproof polyethylene film. This is the product that in various qualities we know today as duct tape. The first unequivocal reference I can find to a tape that sounds like the modern material is this announcement in a trade journal:
DUCT TAPE
Duro-Dyne Corp.
Farmingdale, N.Y.
A new duct tape for sealing ductwork and insulation on heating and air conditioning installations is available in this firm's aluminum cloth series (high count, high strength cloth) and in its aluminum reinforced fiber series.
Heating and Air Conditioning Contractor, Volume 49, 1957.
The term duct tape has never been trademarked, though several compound terms that include it have — it seems that it had become generic before anybody thought of registering it.
Your other term, duck tape, has a different history. Apart from a one-off instance in the Oxford English Dictionary of duck tape from 1971 (which looks like a case of what’s called elision — the collision of the two ts in the middle of duct tape causes the first one to be lost.), I can’t find duck tape in the adhesive sense until the 1980s. It was a trademark of Henkel Consumer Adhesives (now owned by ShurTech Brands), dating from 1982, who sold it under that name in several countries. John Kahl, the CEO of Henkel, was reported by Jan Freeman in the Boston Globe in March 2003 as saying that his father chose the name after noticing that duct tape sounded like duck tape when his customers asked for it.
To summarise. As names for the self-adhesive tape, duct tape came first, given informally to a material used by heating engineers after the Second World War and later transferred to a more sophisticated version, and the duck tape version is elision in rapid speech, capitalised on by a manufacturer long after the duct tape name became commonplace.
idlecyclist
Well-Known Member
Duck/Duct? Its neither.
That looks like Gaffer tape to me.
That looks like Gaffer tape to me.
IT'S DUCT, DUCT, DUCT.
DUCT TAPE FOR TAPING OVER JOINTS IN VENTILATION DUCTS ......
Thank you.
Knobbers.
fossyant
Ride It Like You Stole It!
- Location
- South Manchester
Had a play !
deptfordmarmoset
Full time tea drinker
- Location
- Armonmy Way
In the duck v duct conflict, can I suggest adopting the equally widespread name of gaffer tape?
It'll be a piece about traffic restrictions placed on private cars in London, no doubt.
It'll be a piece about traffic restrictions placed on private cars in London, no doubt.
LCpl Boiled Egg
Three word soundbite
This will be like everything else on Top Gear, fake, staged and with no relation to the real world.
Yes, just like a marked police car doesn't. I'm also sure that the camera motorbike will make their single foray into London traffic a good representative sample. They are gonna be real experts by the time Jeremy's uber fit body calls time on the session.
Dogtrousers
Kilometre nibbler
IT'S DUCT, DUCT, DUCT.
DUCT TAPE FOR TAPING OVER JOINTS IN VENTILATION DUCTS ......
Thank you.
The Finns call it Jeesusteippi "Jesus tape" because it performs miracles.
If it keeps Clarkson quiet it should be called the Holy Trinity.
semislickstick
Guru
- Location
- Cambridgeshire
Are those Go-pro's front and back of his MTB? (just above the arrow added by Fossyant?) Maybe the crew leave them to it, I do hope so.
I was wondering if there was a helmet cam on top but hard to tell if that's part of the shop front, H&M.
I was wondering if there was a helmet cam on top but hard to tell if that's part of the shop front, H&M.