Some people used to say that the secret of success was to build a better mousetrap . Contained in that saying was the idea that the best mousetraps had already been developed; however, if you could find a way to improve upon it, others would want it. Success was guaranteed, but unlikely.
The same might be said of the tape measure . After centuries of measuring things with our feet or the length of an arm or a stick of wood, tape measures must have been seen as quite an improvement. The first company to manufacture steel tape measures in the United States was Justus Roe & Sons, in the 19th Century. The original concept was to place metal studs around several lengths of wires; that idea developed into the retractable steel version we know today. However, the company’s development process did not stop there.
In 1956, Justus Roe & Sons created the longest tape measure in the world and presented it to baseball great, Mickey Mantle . The tape was 600 feet long.
Improvements to markings on the tape have also been made over time — such as placing additional marks that are shaped like black diamonds every 19.2 inches (or 490 mm); these were created to mark out equal truss lengths for roofing materials and were known as “black truss” markings. Some tapes also have special marks every 16 inches to indicate the standard distance between studs in housing.
One of the more recent improvements was the self-marking tape measure, developed by a man named Robert Cole in June of 2003, just seven years ago.