Abstract: Uniform lengths of elastic tape are secured to a continuously advancing mrial web, for example, to make baby diapers. First an intermittently advancing tape is repeatedly gathered, for example, by laying tape sections into a depression of defined dimensions, to relieve the tape sections of any stretching. This assures tape sections of uniform length which are then stretched, cut and applied to the material web, for example, by an adhesive bonding. The apparatus used for performing these steps has several cooperating rollers of which the first has the depressions in its surface and is rotated intermittently while the second roller is rotated continuously. The spacings between neighboring tape sections bonded to the web preferably have a uniform length.