Zipper - History

History

Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine, received a patent in 1851 for an "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure". Perhaps because of the success of his sewing machine, he did not try to seriously market it, missing recognition he might otherwise have received.

Forty-two years later, Whitcomb Judson, who invented the pneumatic street railway, marketed a "Clasp Locker". The device was similar to Howe's patent, but actually served as a (more complicated) hook-and-eye shoe fastener. With the support of businessman Colonel Lewis Walker, Judson launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture the new device. The clasp locker had its public debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and met with little commercial success. Judson is credited with having invented the zipper because he was the first person to market it.

Gideon Sundbäck, a Swedish-American electrical engineer, was hired to work for the Universal Fastener Company in St. Catharines, Ontario in 1906. He was also the president and CEO of Lightning Fastener Co. Good technical skills and a marriage to the plant-manager's daughter Elvira Aronson led Sundbäck to the position of head designer. After his wife's death in 1911, he devoted himself to the worktable, and by December 1913 had designed the modern zipper.

Gideon Sundbäck increased the number of fastening elements from four per inch (about one every 6.4 mm) to ten or eleven (around every 2.5 mm), introduced two facing rows of teeth that pulled into a single piece by the slider, and increased the opening for the teeth guided by the slider. The patent for the "Separable Fastener" was issued in 1917. Gideon Sundbäck also created the manufacturing machine for the new device. The "S-L" or "scrapless" machine took a special Y-shaped wire and cut scoops from it, then punched the scoop dimple and nib, and clamped each scoop on a cloth tape to produce a continuous zipper chain. Within the first year of operation, Sundbäck's machinery was producing a few hundred feet (around 100 meters) of fastener per day.In March of the same year, Mathieu Burri a Swiss inventor improved the design by adding a lock-in system attached to the last teeth, but his version never got into production due to conflicting patents.

The popular zipper name came from the B. F. Goodrich Company in 1923. B.F. Goodrich Company was founded by Benjamin Goodrich. He was a physician and industrialist, born in Ripley, New york, USA. He was a surgeon during the Civil War, who started his career when he opened a private practice in Jamestown, NY (1864). The company opted to use Gideon Sundbäck's fastener on a new type of rubber boots (or galoshes) and referred to it as the zipper, and the name stuck. The two chief uses of the zipper in its early years were for closing boots and tobacco pouches. It was almost twenty years before the fashion industry began seriously promoting the novel closure on garments.

In the 1930s, a sales campaign began for children's clothing featuring zippers. The campaign praised zippers for promoting self-reliance in young children by making it possible for them to dress in self-help clothing. The zipper beat the button in 1937 in the "Battle of the Fly", after French fashion designers raved over zippers in men's trousers. Esquire declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray."

The most recent innovation in the zipper's design was the introduction of models that could open on both ends, as on jackets. Today the zipper is by far the most widespread fastener, and is found on clothing, luggage, leather goods, and various other objects.