Duck tape or duct tape?

[BRYAN]

Could you be thinking of Sylglas tape?

http://www.sylglas.com/products/wptape.htm

Yes Andy.
I sealed the leaking van roof and when the chaps that sold the vehical to me saw it the extracted the urine. Well they were coach builders but I was just a builder so what did they expect?

 

[Bm101]

.

 

[Bm101]

So what colour was marmalade?

 

[J-G]

Oh apologies, I meant the pronunciation. It's clearly spelt GIF as you pointed out. It's also pronounced GIF and I'll fight people that say otherwise.

If anything the apology should come from me for my mis-understanding.

It would appear that before we english were introduced to the fruit as "an orange" we were calling things that were coloured orange yellowred or redyellow.

We refer to 'Robin Red-breast' but a Robin clearly has what we now call 'Orange' feathers on the breast - simply because 'Orange' as a colour didn't exist when the epithet came into use.

 

[Duncan A]

Very good history lesson.
I was aware of "cotton duck" fabric from odd mentions in books dating back around the war years but never made the link to the tape.
Every day's a school day

Cotton duck is still used; I received a hat made of cotton duck just yesterday. Also still used for clothing, canvas shoes and other heavy duty tasks.
Duncan

 

[TJC]

It's always been gaffer tape for me...

 

[jim282]

I used to use gaffer and duct tape interchangeably before realising that gaffer tape and duct tape are two different things.

Duck/duct tape is made with a plastic coating and is more waterproof and stickier, whilst the other is made with a cloth coating and is less sticky/waterproof but leaves less residue when removing.

 

[Craywater]

Well well...... I do remember my late father, who worked at ROF Glascoed in Usk (munitions factory) bringing the odd roll home. In the factory it was ALWAYS known as ’jungle tape’. It was often a source of argument with my mates, as we grew up, who would insist on calling it duct tape......I was having none of that!

We called it gafer tape! Gorilla call it duck. ROF club Usk road.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

WRONG! GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format

Which is why I also say gif not jif! Don't ask me how to pronounce Linux either!

 

[Woody2Shoes]

If anything the apology should come from me for my mis-understanding.


We refer to 'Robin Red-breast' but a Robin clearly has what we now call 'Orange' feathers on the breast - simply because 'Orange' as a colour didn't exist when the epithet came into use.

Yes, red and blue when describing lots of animals usually means orange and grey. A clue for oranges is in the Spanish naranja "a norange"

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I guess the original tape for ammo boxes shed water like a duck's back....

 

[bjm]

...Don't ask me how to pronounce Linux either!

That's easy - it's pronounced 'Linux'

 

[Woody2Shoes]

So what colour was marmalade?

Quince-coloured ! (of course )

....."The word "marmalade" is borrowed from the Portuguese marmelada, from marmelo 'quince'. ".... Marmalade - Wikipedia

 

[Eric The Viking]

The first web browser I used (Mosaic, probably Firefox's earliest ancestor) ran on Unix workstations (PCs could barely be properly networked at the time), and IIRC, picture files (GIFs) couldn't be displayed until version 2 was released. Prior to that they did get used on bulletin boards in a limited way (in the late 1980s, the very slow data rates of phone-line modems meant you usually didn't attempt any "realistic" images if you didn't need to).

I can't remember when the famous (Berkeley?) coffe-pot cam started, nor when the "Strawberry Pop-Tart Blowtorch" page appeared, but I'm pretty sure both used animated GIFs (the Berkeley one I think made GIFs on-the-fly). Those were around 1993.

All a VERY long time ago, but in the circles I moved in then, GIF always had a hard "G".

 

[paulrbarnard]

Lifted from today's Times -

Ducking the debate
How do you pronounce that sticky tape for mending leaks — is it “duck tape” or “duct tape”? I can’t say I’d ever given it much thought but I’m better informed on the rights and wrongs now, after a correspondence with Alan Halbert of Winchester.

“Your story about the air leak on the International Space Station,” he wrote, “recounts how the astronauts made a temporary repair, and then repeats a (relatively new) canard by saying that they used ‘duct tape’. This should be spelt ‘duck tape’: it was originally made of duck.”

I liked the “canard”, but I wasn’t convinced. Cursory research revealed that “Duck tape” was a brand name from the 1950s, but that most recent usage favoured “duct”. Not so simple, says Mr Halbert.

The story is that the original tape was indeed made of a heavy-duty cotton fabric called duck, which was treated with some petroleum derivative to make it waterproof for the use of the US army in WW2 in sealing ammunition boxes. After the war, surplus supplies were marketed to plumbers as “duct tape” suitable for mending leaks in water pipes — or ducts. A US company registered the trade name “Duck brand duct tape”, and an intractable and lasting confusion was born.

The style guide ordains “duct tape, two words”, so we’ll carry on as we were, Mr Halbert’s canard notwithstanding, but I’m delighted with the history lesson.

Rose Wild.

Duck is a brand name. Duct describes the origional use, as in sealing Ducting. So either works. You could of course be using Duck duct tape

 

[J-G]

I can't remember when the famous (Berkeley?) coffe-pot cam started

The Coffee Pot Cam was CAMBRIDGE not Berkeley. First shown on the WWW on 22nd November 1993 but originally being used internally in 1991.

 

[BHwoodworking]

i call it that blddy sticky stuff that you cant get off your finger

 

[Eric The Viking]

The Coffee Pot Cam was CAMBRIDGE not Berkeley. First shown on the WWW on 22nd November 1993 but originally being used internally in 1991.

That would be why I couldn't remember it then
At least I got the date roughly correct.

 

[XH558]

WRONG! GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format

Apparently I read this week that either pronunciation is acceptable. Gif or Gif(JIF)

 

[XH558]

Duct tape,
Duck tape,
Tank tape,
Gaffa tape,
F"%$&ing sticky basT(&" tape, it has lots of names..........