Apple Inc. (AAPL), 3M Co (MMM): Launching the Final Frontier of Technology

The Enterprise‘s diagnostic-rich “sick bays” have given way to modern hospitals stuffed with MRI machines and a variety of other advanced electronic screening gadgetry. Even portable energy-beam weapons are in development and have been named PHASR in honor of Trek‘s handheld future-guns.

Two Trek technologies remain, for now, unattainable holy grails of technological development: the matter transporter and the warp drive. That hasn’t stopped ambitious scientists from trying. Quantum teleportation has been tested in several labs, but that’s a long way from beaming people to nearby planets. Faster-than-light travel is still far beyond our abilities, but some very smart people at NASA believe it might be possible. The agency’s propulsion-focused skunkworks division has been working to detect possible “warp bubbles” at microscopic levels. If the warp bubble theory is real, our descendants might really be able to venture to deep space, where no one has gone before.

Let’s stick together
We don’t have to look to the final frontier to find bright ideas first revealed on Sept. 8. 3M Co (NYSE:MMM) began to sell a waterproof, transparent cellophane adhesive tape on Sept. 8, 1930. It took on the name “Scotch tape” when, as Wired writes:

… a St. Paul car dealer became annoyed because the cellulose ribbons originally only had adhesive on the borders. Slagging 3M Co (NYSE:MMM) (known in those days as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co.) for being stingy, he invoked Scotland’s penny-pinching reputation and dubbed the product “Scotch tape.”

Scotch tape is now one of 3M Co (NYSE:MMM)’s most popular products. The company has reported that it sells enough Scotch tape each year to circle the globe 165 times — that’s more than 4.1 million miles of tape!

The article Launching the Final Frontier of Technology originally appeared on Fool.com is written by Alex Planes.

Fool contributor Alex Planes has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends 3M and Apple and owns shares of Apple and Qualcomm. 

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