Richard Drew was born in 1886 and died in 1956. 1923 entered Minnesota mining and manuf operation company (hereinafter referred to as 3M company) in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. At that time, the company was still a small company that made sandpaper. Once, Drew worked on a new type of sandpaper. In order to know the trial performance of this sandpaper, he visited the garage where sandpaper was used. He heard the employees of the garage talking about the problems encountered in border treatment when painting cars with two colors. When one kind of paint is finished and another color is painted, it is always necessary to block the painted part with heavy masking tape, and then paint another color. However, when the masking tape is removed, the paint is often knocked off. Drew had an idea. If the abrasive of sandpaper is removed, a suitable adhesive can be applied to the backing paper to form a light and convenient masking tape. Can't this problem be solved? After he returned to the company, he actively invested in research and development. From the selection of backing paper, the formula of adhesive to the repeated selection of processing technology, he developed a 5 cm wide khaki paper tape coated with light-sensitive and pressure-sensitive transparent adhesive, and applied for patents in the United States and Britain.
Drew filed an American patent application on May 28th, 1928, and obtained an American patent on May 27th, 1930 with the patent number of US1760820. ; The obtained British patent number is GB3 126 10.