By Veronica MacDonald Ditko
An Accidental Anthropologist
My son thinks a piece of tape will solve anything. This includes broken plastic toys, beloved pictures his younger brother has snipped to smithereens, and holes in his clothing. I tell him tape doesn’t fix everything as I half-heartedly try to stick a radiator back on a truck. Then I learned about duct tape.
Remember Apollo 13? You know the movie with Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, etc. based on the real-life event in 1970? An oxygen tank exploded on a failed mission to the moon and the astronauts were going to run out of air to breathe. A few power cells to power the spaceship also failed. A group of engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center devised a solution using plastic bags, cardboard and, yes you guess it, duct tape. Duct tape was later used to fix the fender of a lunar rover on the Apollo 17 voyage. Amazing. This stuff even works on the moon!
Duct tape was a war-time invention, launched by Johnson & Johnson in 1942 during World War II. It was designed to resist water and was a combination of a rubber-based adhesive and a durable cotton duck cloth backing. This could be why some refer to it as “duck” tape. At first the tape was used to seal ammunition cases. Later it was used to repair military equipment such as jeeps, firearms, and even aircraft.
Today, duct tape comes in many colors other than olive green or gray. It’s often used to repair race cars. It also comes in handy to make clothing. What?
Yes, a scholarship contest sponsored by the Duck brand of duct tape offers $10,000 to the couple with the most impressive prom ensemble made using duct tape. The deadline is June 13. Check out winners from last year, they are impressive. I know I don’t have talent to even sew a sock, let alone make a prom dress out of a sticky material!
The “Duct Tape Guys,” Jim Berg and Tim Nyberg who wrote books about this stuff, said duct tape actually sticks best to itself. So I can see how to make some clothing…but still…
At any rate, I still have a roll of duct tape from college. It has probably sat through too many hot summers to still be useable. I also can’t find it because I didn’t want my boys to find it. Just imagine what they would create….and I’d never be able to remove…!
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, Suite101.com and more.