Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The Day I Nearly Invented Peel & Stick/Double Sided Tape

Anyone who collected baseball cards in the late 60’s to the mid 70’s should remember that for about a year or two a packet of baseball cards came with a round little metal disc. It had a picture of a baseball player with his statistics on the back. Now I don’t know why but I am sure that it was to increase sales.
Now for a time I was putting my baseball cards in a scrapbook. I thought it would be cool if I could put my discs on the cover of the book. How could I do this? There was no way to stick the backs of them to the cover of the book. I did something that no one in my family had seen done. I took some Scotch tape and doubled it over on the ends of the tape. This way it was sticky on both sides and I was able to stick the disc to the cover of the scrapbook. Dad thought that was a clever idea. He said I should copyright it. After Mom and Dad explained to me what a copyright was I told them “Aw! It’s too easy to do. No one will pay me for my idea. They can just do what I did at home.” Cut to a few years into the future. I forget what the item was but I had to stick something to my wall and I peeled off the back and stuck it to the wall. Suddenly I remembered my scrapbook and my parent's advice. I could kick myself. Not long after that I was in a hardware store and saw double sided tape. I could kick my self again. So I was on the road to inventing them both but didn’t see how to carry it farther on. Live and learn. Posted by Picasa

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