Today, tech nerds are obsessed with high-tech encryption. But if you ever send snail mail, you might want to take a tip from America’s intelligence community. The CIA sends out letters that are secured with a specific type of tamper-proof tape—think of it like low-tech encryption—and we now know exactly what kind the…

Despite the name, Scotch tape wasn't invented by the Scottish. It was invented by a college dropout named Richard Drew from Minnesota who worked for a small sandpaper company founded in 1902 called Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, later known as 3M. The name "Scotch" itself has an origin story almost as interesting…

12 people and ten days: That's how long the artist collective Numen / For Use says it took to create a cellophane jungle gym inside this gallery in Paris, where visitors can crawl inside their milky, transparent network like spiders on a web. How much tape did they use? Almost 30 miles.

How many laps of a roll of tape do you usually need to find the starting edge with your fingernail? Three? Four? You won't even need fingernails with with this clever roll of electrical tape that features a wavy double-stripe pattern making the starting edge impossible to miss—all you need to do is spot the break in…

Japanese artist Ei Wada, who was born in 1987, belongs to a generation that spent middle school feverishly poring over cassettes to make mix tapes—until, of course, they were quickly outmoded by CDs, and then MP3s. Now, Ei makes art using the outmoded technologies he grew up with.

If there's one animal that's inspired endless scientific research—it's the gecko. The lizard's ability to seemingly defy gravity and walk on walls has resulted in robots that can repair spaceships in flight, and now maybe even self-cleaning reusable sticky tape.

There's probably very few of us who've put much thought into what kind of tape we use to wrap a gift—after all, choosing the paper is hard enough. But there's a small subset of the population who couldn't possibly consider giving a gift that wasn't flawlessly wrapped. And it's those folks who will be ecstatic to…

It's joked that duct tape can be used to fix almost anything. But a new product called FiberFix might very well be the only tool you'll ever need for emergency repairs. And the secret is its special resin adhesive that hardens stronger than steel as it cures.

While Iran's been busy bragging about mass producing the American ScanEagle drone that crash landed there last year—and giving the Russians a copy—some less than intimidating footage is trickling out of Tehran. It looks like Iran's newest drones are pretty rickety.

Any task requiring the use of clear tape would be a lot easier if you could snatch a strip of the sticky stuff with just one hand. And while there have been many complicated contraptions that promise exactly that functionality, Black+Blum have found a simpler approach that takes advantage of that perpetual force known…

So you've got yourself a car that needs lifting, and have secured an industrial crane for the job, but did you also remember to get a giant harness for the lift? Probably not. Don't worry, though, as long as you can scrounge a few rolls of cellophane packing tape, you're good to go.

It's not going to replace the claw that snatches prizes in the machine at your local arcade. But this tiny scotch tape gripper could one day provide a cheap and low-tech way for autonomous vehicles to snatch samples. And you thought duct tape was the king of adhesives.

It's not often something as mundane as a tape dispenser is worth a second glance. But then again, most of the office supplies on your desk weren't created by one of Alessi's talented designers. The Filo is as minimal as tape dispensers can get, and that's what makes it beautiful.

While the future of storage on your laptop is undoubtedly solid state, it's more difficult to predict how the huge tranches of data in server farms will be housed in the future. Recent suggestions, though, predict the rebirth of an old technology: the humble casette tape.

Here's a video that'll shatter many a Hollywood movies: putting duct tape over somebody's mouth doesn't stop them from screaming, it doesn't make them stop talking and it definitely doesn't keep them quiet. In fact, putting duct tape over somebody's mouth does... absolutely nothing.

Since it's totally pre-occupied with its latest rover roaming the surface of Mars, we figured we'd give NASA a hand, specifically when it comes to restocking its gift shop. Unfortunately, South Korean designer Jeongmi Lee's lovely space-themed Spacionery office accessories don't exist yet. But NASA put a man on the…

Proving you can literally fix and improve anything with tape, physicists at the University of Toronto have developed a simple technique to give semiconductors superconducting properties with a bit of clear Scotch tape. And you thought duct tape was the hero of the adhesive world.

Even though you might have to salvage the boxes from your local grocery store, and they'll probably be emblazoned with Rice-A-Roni and Chiquita Banana logos, you can still ensure the next time you move is a classy affair with these upscale rolls of fake leather strap packing tape. Swanky.