Learning about duct tape in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader
I was reading about duct tape the other day and I had no idea that it used to be called duck tape. Apparently it had this name because it was made from a kind of cotton canvas called “duck” which was waterproof.
I don’t think I’d ever used duct tape before moving to Canada but it’s such a great thing to have on hand for all types of jobs.
Here are a few good uses that duct tape has been put to:
Good for removing warts. The tape irritates the wart and causes the immune system to start up and attack the virus that causes the wart. I’ve no idea if it works and I don’t recommend it from ever having tried it. I haven’t.
A farmer in Maine, USA used it on a cow when it had a large cut. The duct tape held the wound together until healed.
Another farmer used the same technique on a chicken.
Here in Canada, when calves are born in the severe cold their ears can sometimes freeze so the farmers tape their ears to their heads to keep them warm with duct tape.
Astronaut Bill Shepherd and Cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko pieced together scraps of aluminium with they then attached a duct tape top to for use as a table on the international space station.
Now I didn’t just know all this stuff but I read it in “Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader” the sixteenth edition. I love these books because they’re just so entertaining with facts and accounts of real life that are the perfect reading length when one is tied up in the washroom. To be honest with you sometimes I end up spending a little longer than I planned there.
Anyway I’d hate to take credit for the duct tape story but it’s this kind of thing in these books that I find so interesting. I’m not sure that I ever saw the bathroom readers before moving to Canada but I thoroughly recommend them because they are so absorbing to read as opposed to the paper used within being absorbent! 
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Sam Nova
Funny enough, before I moved to Switzerland I also didn’t know the word ‘Duct tape’ (I actually thought it was ‘Dutch’) and I was often ‘eh, what are you talking about’. What I heard was just that it was the old brand name and it got so popular that people just called it by that name; then again, I’m not sure if this is the real story behind it. I just searched for ‘duct tape history’ on Google and found some references to it been ‘invented’ during a war.
Oh, we also use the same name for the ‘tape’ you use when wrapping presents and such, the ‘tape’ you would find on an office desk. Not sure if there is a better/other name for it in English.
Thanks for mentioning the Bathroom Reader, time for me to order
Sep 28th, 2007
Stephen
I also thought that that the wikipedia entry about duct tape was an interesting read and referred back to it’s use during the World War 2 for sealing ammunition cases.
All I know is it’s helped me out as a quick fix so many times!
When my brother visited earlier this year from England we gave him a Bathroom Reader as a gift on his return home. I know that he sees his visit’s to the bathroom as very educational now.
Sep 28th, 2007
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