Johnson & Johnson made the first duct tape after an ammunition packer wrote to Roosevelt.
In 1943 Vesta Stoudt, who had two sons in the Navy, packed rifle-grenade cartridges in Illinois. Their boxes were sealed with paper tape whose tabs tore off, leaving soldiers clawing at them under fire. She wrote to Roosevelt, and the War Production Board asked J&J to make the cloth tape she proposed.
Johnson & Johnson on Brandseum